


heavyweight

by warmfoothills



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Post-War, draco calls harry by his last name the whole time because he's an idiot, draco listens to depressing late 90s music, draco living as a muggle!, harry is a little messed up!, idk why i get so preoccupied with the weather it's pathetic fallacy ok, like literally right after i guess, some drinking and bad language and quite a bit of sex, summer except it rains the whole time!, they both are in fact, uhhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 12:31:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16040534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmfoothills/pseuds/warmfoothills
Summary: Draco had moved out of his childhood home five days after his father got sent to Azkaban. He’d packed up his rooms, piling up boxes until the walls were bare and his cupboards were empty and his arms were shaking because he’d done it all by hand instead of using magic. He’d barely used magic at all since his trial. Then he’d left everything there in the middle of his bedroom and apparated away with one case of clothes that his mother shrunk down enough to fit in his pocket.





	heavyweight

**Author's Note:**

> oh thank GOD this is is finally done it was supposed to be a little cathartic summer thing and now it’s september and almost 30k words so! if it reads like an overly wordy self-indulgent therapy session, that’s because it essentially is i’m sorry, hope you enjoy anyway, any mistakes are my own x

Harry Potter shows up on a wet pavement one week after Draco’s eighteenth birthday. Draco doesn’t feel eighteen, he feels like he’s lived three decades and come out younger and more confused than he was as a child. It’s raining, obviously, and Draco keeps running a hand self-consciously through his hair because it’s damp and falls forward irritatingly in wet strands over his face if he doesn’t push it back.

Potter is just standing there across the street as Draco looks left and right, waiting for an unlikely break in the constant London traffic so he can cross the road. For some reason he’s not even surprised, though Potter should look incongruous against these buildings that have become Draco’s new normal.

“Malfoy,” he says when Draco makes it across the road, voice pitched louder over the noise of buses and horns beeping. He falls into step as Draco walks straight past him, shoulders set against the rain.

Draco doesn’t ask how Potter found him. The last time he’d seen Potter was after the trails, when he’d given Draco his wand back along with a look that Draco hadn’t had the energy or desire to even begin to figure out, and then walked away. Now he’s here on Kensington Park Road wearing a frankly ridiculous raincoat what looks like _over_ his robes, which are scarlet and slightly too big for him. It’s barely a month since the battle and of course he’s been inducted into the Aurors already. Draco assumes his hair is in its usual state as well but he has his hood up.

“Heading to work?” Potter asks and Draco hears what he actually means which is “we know everything you’ve done since we let you walk out of the Ministry and you’re only being allowed to do it because we’ve decided you’re not a threat”. Or, something along those general lines. Draco’s actually just been at Tesco buying wine because he only has Sundays off and hadn’t been able to properly celebrate his birthday last week in the way he intended — by getting drunk, alone, and listening to some embarrassing music — but Potter doesn’t need Draco to tell him that. He probably already knows.

Draco wishes he’d remembered his umbrella and he wishes Potter wasn’t here. He doesn’t want to explain himself. He hadn’t wanted to with his mother; he can’t even to himself. He has no idea what he’s doing except that he’s doing it and it’s going ok, for the most part.

“What do you want, Potter?” Draco asks as he dodges a puddle, passing under a butcher’s awning that allows him a two second respite from the downpour and then turning left into Ladbroke Gardens. If he didn’t have this current complex about his wand he could have cast an Impervius on his shoes before he left, but as it is they’ll probably be ruined. He needs to buy some waterproof boots; London this summer is waterlogged, everywhere hazy with moisture.

Potter is, annoyingly, keeping up with him, despite Draco’s best efforts to make his strides as long as possible. “I was just in the area,” he lies.

Draco doesn’t feel that level of blatant dishonesty deserves a response. He’s very aware of the sound of the bottles banging together in the shit plastic Tesco bag now they’re on a quieter street. 

The problem is, he wants to go home and he can’t very well lead Potter all over London in an attempt to shake him off, but he doesn’t want to bring Potter to his house either. The idea of Potter, who’s always been this ball of energy and power, barely contained emotion and quick temper, in Draco’s space, between the cool, white walls, makes Draco want to claw his own skin off, just a bit. He supposes he could slam the door in Potter’s face, except he clearly already knows where Draco lives so there’s no point pretending he can’t show up whenever he feels like it. Draco can feel himself scrambling for some control over the situation, a month of careful compartmentalisation threatening to topple with the barest of nudges.

“Well,” he makes himself say when they get to his front door. The two steps up from the pavement put him further above Potter, which helps. “Not that this little ambush hasn’t been lovely, but goodbye, Potter. Try not to come again.”

It’s surprisingly easy to dredge up snarky Draco with a real, annoying flesh-and-blood Harry Potter in front of him. Draco’s quite pleased with himself, that part of him had got a little lost for a while. Until he realises Potter is just smiling, looking calm as you please to be standing in the rain on Draco’s street.

“See you around, Malfoy,” he says but he doesn’t move so Draco really does have to close the door in his face and then stand in his hallway dripping and feeling confused and annoyed at himself for feeling confused and mostly very tired.

 

///

 

Draco had moved out of his childhood home five days after his father got sent to Azkaban. He’d packed up his rooms, piling up boxes until the walls were bare and his cupboards were empty and his arms were shaking because he’d done it all by hand instead of using magic. He’d barely used magic at all since his trial. Then he’d left everything there in the middle of his bedroom and apparated away with one case of clothes that his mother shrunk down enough to fit in his pocket.

Finding a house in Muggle London had been easier than expected, but then he’s rich and he’s grown up knowing that money in the kind of quantities he’s used to can get you most things, quickly. He spent a Saturday in a library reading books until he was overwhelmed and then picked an area randomly by wandering around, not really sure what he was looking for. Still, he likes the way the houses on his street look old on the outside, just enough to remind him of what he’s left behind, but the insides are all sleek and modern and full of things that Draco doesn’t really know how to use. It’s nice that they’re already full; it makes him feel less ridiculous.

Talking to the Muggle woman who’d shown him around was difficult and exhausting but he’d just done it, just muddled through and ended up signing paperwork that he barely read — his mother would have killed him if she knew, but she was probably already in France by then. Neither of them were ones for lingering once a decision had been made.

His first night, he’d sat in the attic bedroom, the only room not furnished, new keys pressed so tightly in his palm that the edges had dug into his skin. He’d allowed himself ten overwhelming minutes of panic, of pain at what he’d lost and what he’d left behind, of ugly, aching self-loathing and then he’d shut it all up into the box in his head that he built the summer before sixth year. The walls of it barely shake at all anymore.

///

It’s three days before Draco sees Potter again, this time at work, which instantly makes him feel all horrible and off-centre. His brain can’t quite cope with the image of Potter here, in this bar, a place so completely removed from his old life. He’d applied for the job more as a way to submerge himself in the Muggle world than because he needed the money but he likes it, he thinks, though it’s— weird, for want of a better word. He’s never worked a day in his life, for one, and it’s still tricky navigating Muggle behaviour. He doesn’t understand them. He does, however, understand rich people and his job is basically to talk them into buying more alcohol, so he fell into that side of things pretty easily.

It’s been nice, in an odd way that makes him feel horribly guilty for even thinking it, to chat to people, tentatively flirt with men and make groups of girls in high, high heels laugh. Nobody knows who he is here and he seems to fit right in his with sharp cheekbones and the high-bred accent he’s never quite been able to shake. No one looks twice at him, he’s just another pale, rich nobody in a sea of rich somebodies. Sometimes he thinks about how it felt so important to be noticed, back at school, and now it’s addictive to be lost amongst a hundred faces. The sheer number of people in London, moving and living and talking and running for the bus, allows him an anonymity he never knew he wanted.

And the people he works with are friendlier than he expected. They don’t know him, they have no reason to hate him and yet it still shocks him to see genuine smiles on their faces when he greets them, even though he’s been here a month now. And there’s Jenny, who’d been determined to, as she’d put it, draw him under her wing since his first day. Within three shifts he’d found himself relaxing, the set of his shoulders evening out as she chatted to him between customers, rolling her eyes when they were demanding or rude. She reminds him a bit of Pansy, but he tries not to think about that too much. Jenny’s different anyway, looser, laughs easier. She makes Draco want to forget.

He doesn’t know how Potter had even got in tonight, he’s still underage by Muggle standards and there’s a very strict dress code for fuck’s sake. He’d probably confunded the doorman, the insufferable bastard. At least he’s not in robes this time, but his outfit is far too casual; the rips in his jeans don’t look deliberate but more like they’re the result of extreme age and Potter’s inability to look after himself.

Making snide comments in his head allows him to mostly avoid the small breakdown he could have if he let himself. He’s spent the last three days trying not to think too much about Potter and then giving up and thinking so hard he’s had a near constant headache. Still, he’s come to the conclusion that it was, when he’s feeling generous, bloody weird for Potter to just corner him on the street and not really explain why, and, when he’s feeling melodramatic, borderline harassment. And Draco had just— what? Tried his best to ignore him? He should have told him to fuck off, because clearly Potter didn’t get the hint from him closing the door in his face.

No matter, he can do it now. He just has to wait for Paul to move away; he absolutely can not risk telling a customer to fuck off within earshot of his boss, even if it is Potter. _Paul_ doesn’t know that Potter is practically stalking him and thus thoroughly deserves it, he’ll just think Draco’s being rude. He wishes Jenny were here but it’s her day off.

Annoyingly, Paul seems determined to stick around, though it at least gives Draco an excuse to treat Potter with the cool, polite detachment he would any other customer. Potter’s eyebrows shoot up when Draco asks him what he wants, tacking a sir onto the end like Paul insists they do. He really is deluded about how posh the place is, no matter how much he ups the drink prices. Potter orders a gin and tonic, of all things, and when Draco’s pouring it and Paul’s been distracted by someone trying to change the music, he rests his elbows on the bar and says, “So.”

It’s busy tonight, but Draco can unfortunately hear Potter quite clearly and he really isn’t that keen to find out why exactly he’s tracked Draco down.

“If you’re here to check if I’m doing anything illegal, Potter, investigate away. You won’t find anything.” He places the glass on the bartop with a little more force than necessary, the base clunking heavily.

“I know you’re not doing anything illegal.” Potter takes a sip of his drink and makes this appreciative noise that Draco really could have done without hearing. Of course Potter knows that Draco’s keeping his head down, he’s in the bloody Aurors, but that still leaves the question of why he’s _here_.

When Potter doesn’t say anything in response to Draco’s folded arms he huffs, annoyed that Potter so easily brings out his childish side. “Well, then. Why exactly are you following me all over London?” which is a bit of an exaggeration obviously, Potter has only tracked him down twice, but Potter apparently brings out his dramatic side too.

Potter shrugs, taking another long drink before he answers. “I was curious, I guess. Wanted to see if the rumours were true.”

“Rumours?”

He makes that humming noise again. “The Prophet had a field day when you and your mum both disappeared. Not that I blame you to be fair, I wouldn’t want to live in that shithole of a Manor either, not after what happened there.”

Draco bristles at that automatically, ready to argue. He’s wound up and it’s good, sort of, like he can feel his blood flowing again, but also horrible that it’s Potter who’s responsible for it. Anyway, Potter doesn’t give him a chance to cut in. “Then I heard you’d moved here and I thought it was bullshit, you know, I really couldn’t ever imagine you doing that. And yet here you are.” He tips his glass at Draco. He’s so— unruffled, so calm and relaxed to be sitting there, like it’s totally normal for him to be curious about what Draco’s doing now. He shouldn’t give a shit, past the fact that Draco’s not breaking the law, he shouldn’t care what he’s doing.

Before Draco can decide what the hell he’s supposed to say to that, Paul’s back, asking him where the spare martini glasses are and reminding him that there are other customers waiting. Potter sits there finishing his drink whilst Draco does his job and then he orders another one, which Draco happily lets one of his coworkers make. It’s uncomfortable, the feel of Potter’s eyes on him, not constantly, but enough to make him uneasy. He mixes up orders and almost spills more than one drink, things he never does.

When there’s enough of a lull, he heads back over to Potter under the guise of collecting his empty glasses. He makes himself look Potter in the eye but has no idea what he sees there.

“So you literally just came to gawk?” he asks, watching the corner of Potter’s mouth twitch at his phrasing.

“In a way.” Potter’s still unabashed. He doesn’t offer more than that.

God, he’s always been able to get right under Draco’s skin and it’s irritating to realise that hasn’t changed. Draco honestly hadn’t even thought about him once since he’d moved out and now here he is, right back in Draco’s life.

“Ok,” Draco swallows. “Ok. Well, you’ve got what you came for. I’d appreciate it if you tried leaving me the fuck alone from now on though, if you think you can manage it.”

Potter actually laughs at that, his head tilting back so that Draco can’t help but focus on the long line of his neck. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Potter laugh like that, not at something Draco’s said.

“When have either of us ever been able to manage that, Malfoy?” he says, and Draco’s thinking about that long after Potter throws some cash on the bar-top and leaves.

///

The second time Potter finds him at work Draco’s expecting it. He hadn’t been optimistic that his request for Potter to leave him alone would be effective but he wishes Potter hadn’t picked today, when he’s actually in a good mood. The rain had finally let up enough for him to walk to work earlier, meaning he didn’t have to suffer the bus, and Paul isn’t in today, so Jenny has control of the music. It’s early still and it’s been slow night; weekdays sometimes were, especially without the students Jenny tells him they usually get during term-time. They’d been half-dancing, cleaning glasses, Draco’d been _laughing_ , like he thought he’d forgotten how to. And then Potter had arrived.

Jenny notices him tense up, and the others who are in today must do as well because he feels them subtly shift around him, closing in a bit. She shoots him a quizzical look and follows his gaze to Potter, who’s almost at the bar.

“Creepy customer? Ex-boyfriend?” she asks, then, apparently seeing Draco’s expression, “Wait, you don’t have to tell me. Do I need to get rid of him?” They do this for each other sometimes, when customers get a little too handsy, a little too entitled. Paul wouldn’t like it if he knew; he’s not a bad guy, but he really thinks a customer is a customer and doesn’t care how they treat his staff as long as they’re spending money. It feels— Draco’s throat is tight at the way his co-workers, these people he’s barely known for a month, have drawn close to him, no questions asked, even though he’s done the same for them before. Mia who works weekends apparently has a string of asshole ex-boyfriends that Draco feels like he spends half his waking hours kicking out.

Right now he can’t even begin to explain his relationship with Potter to Jenny so he just sighs, pushing his sleeves up further and shakes his head slightly. “It’s fine,” he says, and, when Jenny looks disbelieving, “I’ll deal with him.”

She studies Draco’s face for a second longer then nods, the others moving back into what they were doing, but she stays right pressed up against Draco’s side as Potter reaches them.

“Malfoy,” he says, eyeing Jenny, who snorts at his greeting.

“I know him from school,” Draco says to Jenny instead of answering him, hoping that will explain Potter’s use of his surname and apparently it does because Jenny only asks Potter what he wants to drink.

Potter looks a bit surprised, which is stupid because does he not know he’s in a bloody bar, but he orders something, his gaze not leaving Draco’s face even as he answers Jenny. There’s a small cut on his cheek that Draco keeps finding his eyes drawn to.

He gets pulled away to deal with another customer, a little apprehensive about leaving Potter alone with Jenny, but neither of them seem to be talking as she mixes his drink so he lets himself be distracted. He’s thinking about what the fuck he’s actually going to say to Potter when he finishes with this customer and has to go back over there when it strikes him that actually, he doesn’t have to go back over there at all. Just because Potter has decided to find him once again, doesn’t mean Draco has to talk to him or even acknowledge at him. He’s at work, he was having a reasonably good time before Potter showed up, he can just— keep doing that. He’s made it clear to Potter that he doesn’t want to see him.

He leaves Potter sitting at the other end of the bar, more often than not watching as Draco completely ignores him, goes back to chatting with his co-workers, laughing at Jenny’s song choices and serving customers as the place slowly fills out. At one point Jenny follows him into the back when he goes to get more tonic water and raises her eyebrows at him.

“Don’t,” Draco says lightly, before she even opens her mouth.

She raises her hands in surrender. “Wasn’t going to,” she says, “but he’s just sitting there watching you. You sure you don’t want me to kick him out?”

He sighs again. He could let Jenny throw Potter out, but it feels childish and somehow, it’s more satisfying to have Potter there, waiting on Draco. It shifts the power balance between them slightly, and Draco knows he’s clutching at straws here, but it makes him feel a little less helpless.

“No, honestly, it’s fine,” he says, handing the bottles to her, cold from the fridge. “I’m going to take my break now if that’s ok.”

“ _I’m_ not your boss, Draco, take it whenever you want,” she says but Draco is grateful anyway, and he goes to grab his cigarettes and lighter from his coat pocket as she pushes back through the swing door.

Potter follows him outside, of course, though it takes him a while to realise that Draco isn’t emerging from the back room and then a bit longer to figure out where he’s gone. It gives Draco seven, blissful minutes of peace alone with the bins and the strong smell of piss before Potter comes crashing through the door in a pretty accurate representation of how he shouldered his way back into Draco’s life and shook everything up. And God, Draco really should stop smoking if it’s making him think in stupid metaphors.

“Do they know?” Potter asks. He’s not angry, he just seems sort of confused and wary and so insatiably interested. Draco can’t read his face, especially in this shit lighting, but he doesn’t know why Potter cares so much.

“Know what, Potter?” he snaps, though he knows what Potter’s asking. “Know I’m a wizard? Know I was a war criminal? Do you think the Ministry would be letting me walk around if I’d broken the fucking Statute not even a month from my trial?”

And Draco hates this because Potter _knows_ , Potter _is_ the bloody Ministry, or a significant part of it post-war, and he’s making Draco say it all anyway. 

“What are you trying to do? Protect them from me? Warn them off?” He laughs and suppresses a wince at how bitter it sounds. His good mood from earlier is suddenly gone, leaving him cold and annoyed. “Don’t bother Potter, they’re just people I work with.”

“What, so because they’re Muggles they’re just people you work with?” Potter echoes, annoyed now. “You can call them friends Malfoy. It won’t kill you.”

Friends. Draco had thought he had friends once. And now Vince is dead and Greg is in prison and Pansy and Blaise have wisely fucked off to the continent and all Draco has are these people who don’t know him, not really, but have sort of accepted him anyway. He can’t even be bothered to correct Potter’s assumption that this is about old prejudices because of course, of course that’s what Potter thinks of him. In the end that’s probably all he’ll ever think of him. When Draco looks in the mirror he can see all the things Potter sees, all the old hate and disgust and ignorance.

He takes another drag of his cigarette and tilts his head back against the wall.

“Why are you here, Potter?” Even he can hear the exhaustion in his voice. He’s suddenly so, so tired, and he wishes his shift was over so he could go home and lie in bed with the covers over his head, preferably for the next 48 hours.

“I really don’t know,” Potter says, and Draco has to look at him then, sharply, because the anger’s drained out of his voice and he sounds just as tired as Draco feels. Draco wonders if this is how it’s going to be between them now, constant fluctuations, one or both of them ready to snap at any minute and too spent to fight the next. 

He hopes Potter might just leave and feels bored and depressed at that prospect all at the same time. He doesn’t, instead he moves closer and leans against the wall next to Draco, a careful foot of space between their shoulders.

They spend the rest of Draco’s break in silence, passing the cigarette between them, but Potter doesn’t ask him anymore questions or try to get him to talk at all so Draco supposes that means— something. Probably not.

///

When Draco gets home four hours later, he goes straight to the kitchen and opens the drawer he’s been keeping his wand in, staring at the thin stick of wood lying amongst batteries and spare wires, things he had no use for a month ago. He hasn’t used it once since Potter gave it back to him. Sometimes he thinks about how maybe the last spell it cast was the one that killed the Dark Lord and wants to throw up.

Those are the kind of thoughts that come when he sits up in bed at night, watching the rain out of his window. It’s been raining all summer so far, starting when he was back at the Manor so that the sound of it makes him think of packing his life away. He used to sit in the conservatory when he was a child and listen to it, hard and loud on the glass roof, letting it lull him to sleep, surrounded by green. It’s always been his favourite colour, cliche as it is. He doesn’t sleep much at all now.

This is the problem with Potter showing up again, he thinks as he shuts the drawer, shaking his head and pulling a bottle of wine from the rack. It’s making him think about all the things he’s trying not to. He goes into the living room to jab at the stereo, turning it up until the music is almost loud enough to drown out his spiralling thoughts.

He blames Jenny entirely for this new coping mechanism. She’d immediately and without question accepted the fact that he was completely clueless when it came to pop culture after he’d not recognised any of the songs on the radio and she’d made it her mission to educate him. He’d been worried that his ignorance would be suspicious, but as soon as he’d told her, evasively, that he’d grown up in the Wiltshire countryside and then spent half his life at boarding school in remote Scotland she’d laughed. “Oh, darling,” she’d said, clapping her hands together delightedly. “That explains so much.”

Since then she’d taken to calling him sheltered, which Draco supposes is fair enough. She also insisted on giving him piles of plastic cases that, when he got round to figuring out that they opened, contained discs that weren’t unlike smaller versions of the records his mother had kept back at the manor. He doubted that they would play on her magical gramophone, however, and anyway, he hadn’t much felt like going to collect it from the main drawing room. It would look ridiculous in his house.

Luckily, there was a stereo in the back room at work and after surreptitiously spending a couple of his breaks inspecting it, he’d managed to go into a shop and pick up his own. The salesperson had taken one look at his uncertain face and expensive shoes and latched instantly onto his obvious inexperience and wealth, so that Draco had ended up with rather more than he'd bargained for. A man had come to install it all, putting up these black boxes in several rooms whilst Draco tried to look like he knew exactly what was happening. He’d figured out eventually, after a night spent struggling with the instructions. The result was pretty good, the amplification much better than any wizarding gramophone, and Draco liked that he could turn it up and hear it all the way up in the attic if he wanted to.

Jenny had also lent him her old portable player and showed him — with the amused air of someone explaining something very basic to a small child — how to plug in the headphones and put the disk in so he could hear the music. Apparently, she didn’t need it anymore; she was very excited about something called an MP3 player that Draco didn’t even try to understand, though he did wonder how on earth something so small could have so much music inside of it. The portable was good for when he was walking to work or was feeling stupid and sad and wanted to go and lie in the park and feel fresh air on his face and listen to other people singing about being equally stupid and sad.

To his surprise, he found himself liking Muggle music quite a bit. There was a lot more variety than wizarding music, at least. The stuff they played at work was often too loud and made his head hurt but Jenny seemed to have an extensive library and he liked a lot of it, even when she handed him things with cheerful comments like ‘you seem like a boyband type of bloke’. He’s still trying to figure out if that was an insult or not.

Jenny had also told him that only depressing bastards actually listened to Radiohead voluntarily but Draco likes it and if he’s going to let himself mope he might as well be pretentious about it. He sits on the kitchen counter by the window, feet tucked under him so they’re not in the sink, and stares out at the dark garden. His dislike of who he is gets sharper in moments like this, when he’s so aware of how pathetic he’s being and yet can’t seem to stop it.

The garden is the one bit of the house he hasn’t done anything with yet. It’s small and narrow, and would be overlooked by other houses on all sides if not for the trees shading the grass below. It’s also completely overgrown — the estate agent had been keen to pull him away from it, throwing around enthusiastic phrases like “a real project” and “adds character”. But Draco loves it; in a fierce, awful way it reminds him of the Manor gardens, the only thing about this new life that ties him to the old. And, he supposes, Potter has shown up now to do that too.

And now he’s thinking about Potter again, which feels like all he’s been doing the past week, like he’s back at school again, thirteen with no idea how to get the attention Potter got simply by walking down a corridor. What would Potter think of him here, in the dark of his own kitchen? Would Potter like Radiohead? Would he think Draco was a ridiculous, over-emotional idiot for sitting here making himself deliberately sadder?

And why does he care so much about Potter’s opinion? It’s familiar, the feeling of needing Potter to see him, but he’d lost it for a bit with everything going on in the past couple of years. In sixth year it had been important for Potter _not_ to see him, or figure out what he was trying to do, and then Draco had been living a nightmare in a house he barely recognised with a madman and parents who he couldn’t look in the face without flinching. Potter had sort of fallen significantly down his list of priorities, the top of which was just staying alive, until he’d shown up at the Manor all swollen and bruised and almost unrecognisable. Almost.

In the end, Draco thinks as he drains his wine glass, it’s not why he cares about Potter that matters so much, it’s that he does at all. He always has, in one way or another.

///

Potter starts turning up more frequently as June drags on. The rain lets up a bit, the sun making a welcome appearance until Draco realises its surprisingly strong heat only makes the city unbearable, humid and damp, the air everywhere too close. He longs for the fresh, clean feeling of the rain against his skin again as he walks to work and his clothes stick to him.

He doesn’t know exactly what he and Potter are doing. They seem to have come to some kind of truce after that shared cigarette. He doesn’t think he wants to be Potter’s friend and he’s sure Potter doesn’t want to be his, yet there he is, every couple of days without fail, showing up as Draco finishes work, finding him in parks, or once in HMV, when Draco was looking at DVDs. He’d made Draco buy something called Dirty Dancing which Draco had annoyingly absolutely loved, not that he was going to admit that to Potter.

Draco still doesn’t know how exactly Potter seems to know where he is all the time but he doesn’t ask. They don’t talk about anything like that really, not about what they’re doing or Potter’s job or how the wizarding world is coping with the aftermath of the war. It makes it surprisingly easy to talk to Potter, when they just pretend it isn’t bizarre for them to be having a civil conversation at all, let alone voluntarily spending time together. After a bit Draco doesn’t even try to stop Potter tracking him down, he’s just sort of accepted it. A small part of him knows he likes it even, to have someone he doesn’t necessarily have to watch himself around. Potter formed his opinion of Draco years ago; there’s no need for Draco to try and be anything he’s not.

They still argue a lot, and not even in a friendly way, not in the way Draco used to bicker with his friends back at school. Maybe it’s impossible for them not to constantly be disagreeing, they’re such different people when it comes down to it, and more often than not Draco finds himself exhausted after seeing Potter, drained and annoyed. But no matter how angry he can still make Draco, no matter how much Potter sometimes makes him feel stupid and small and emphasises all the ways Draco thinks he’s not good enough, he’s still there, somehow suddenly a constant again. It’s like he can’t remember what he was doing with his time before Potter. Draco likes consistency, has since he was young. Nothing about his life is what he thought he would be but there’s still Potter, who Draco sometimes catches looking at him like— Draco doesn’t know what. He just knows no one’s ever looked at him like that.

///

“Are you ever going to let me into your house?” Potter asks him one day. They’re in Green Park under the shade of a huge tree, watching some kind of morning exercise class that’s going on. The rain is back today, though the Muggles seem completely undeterred by it, Draco has to hand it to them. He considers Potter’s question as one of the women slips in the damp grass, pulling on her friends arm, the pair of them helping each other up, breathless with laughter.

When he doesn’t answer straight away Potter knocks his foot against Draco’s. It’s just— as much as this has become Draco’s life now, he’s still not really used to it, to them doing things like sitting under trees or going for walks or to the cinema, which Draco had gone into for the first time feeling slightly terrified and come out of wishing he could live in that dark room forever with the sticky floor and the faces so huge on the screen he hadn’t had to think about anything else. He wouldn’t even have minded if Potter had lived there with him too, his presence a warm press against Draco’s shoulder.

It hasn’t really been that long since Potter appeared on that pavement across the road from Draco, but time is weird like that this summer. It feels like a lifetime since he left the manor, years since the reason he tenses up around Potter changed from apprehension to something else.

“I don’t know,” he says, honestly. “Why do you want to see it?”

Potter looks at him. His hair is curling outwards, small beads of moisture caught on the strands, his face a bit damp. Draco has his back pressed to the wide trunk of the tree so he’s sheltered from the worst of the drizzle, his legs stretched out in front of him whilst Potter mirrors him, getting significantly wetter. He could cast an umbrella charm but he seems to be limiting his magic use around Draco, consciously or not. He hasn’t commented on the fact that Draco is living as a Muggle in more than just theory.

“I guess it’s another piece of the puzzle,” he says, with a wry smile. “I still can’t work you out. I figure having as much information as possible can only help.”

They’re back here again, to Draco wondering why Potter’s so curious, wondering what on earth about him can have captured Potter’s attention so thoroughly. 

“Is that was this is all about, Potter? I’m not some— _thing_ to be studied,” he says, sharply, because he still has this, his best defence against Potter looking at him like that.

“No,” Potter says, evenly. “I just mean— I’ve known you most of my life but I have no idea who you are. I thought I knew who you _were_ , but you’re different now. Or maybe you were always like this underneath it all and I never noticed.”

Draco shakes his head, looking up at the branches overhead, which doesn’t help because they’re the same shade as Potter’s eyes. He feels like he has whiplash when he thinks about how they've gone from hating each other to.. whatever this is, in barely any time at all. “No, you’re right. I think— it probably wasn’t possible for me to try and reject everything from before without changing who I am a bit.”

It smells nice here, earthy, even with the road so close behind them, and it’s gloomy enough that Draco can almost pretend it’s evening. He loves London more somehow in the summer evenings, when the sun’s gone but darkness hasn’t quite fallen and all the lights of cars and buildings reflect on the damp pavements and it feels like the city’s just waking up, not winding down for sleep.

“You can come,” he sort of blurts out when Potter doesn’t say anything. “To my house, I mean. I won’t shut the door in your face this time.” He has to swallow down a burst of anxiety to get it out; it still makes him nervous to think of seeing Potter in his space, not in a neutral, public place. Draco’s never had somewhere that’s felt his before, all his, and he doesn’t know how Potter’s going to affect that.

Potter smiles a bit and says, “Ok,” and the first syllable sounds a bit like “thank you” and the second like “for trusting me” so Draco changes the subject.

///

The next day Draco wakes up and immediately realises he’s made a huge mistake. Not inviting Potter to his house, no, he thinks that might actually be ok, but by extending a completely open invitation he’s effectively given Potter permission to come over whenever he wants and that makes Draco panic. If he’d just bloody told Potter a time, or asked him when he might spontaneously decide to pop round, it would have been fine. He didn’t, though, so now he has to spend all the time he’s at home between today and whenever Potter actually does show up flinching at any small noise in case it’s the doorbell.

What if he doesn’t even ring the doorbell, what if he just apparates into the house? What if he arrives when Draco is in the shower or slumped on his sofa yelling at the telly? Draco knows he’s being ridiculous but he can’t stop himself from walking around his house trying to see it through Potter’s eyes. He’s realised he’s a bit, well, _messy_ with no one to pick up after him and yes, Potter’s clearly a slob if the state of his appearance is anything to go on, but Draco has a reputation to uphold. Or, did. He doesn’t know anymore and this is exactly why he didn’t invite Potter round in the first place, it’s making him go crazy.

He can’t owl Potter and ask. He has a phone now but he doesn’t know if Potter does, or how to get his number if he did. None of his fireplaces are connected to the floo network, obviously, and oh, God, what if Potter tries to floo and gets stuck? Surely even he’s not that much of an idiot.

It takes Potter five days to show up, days in which Draco goes back and forth on whether or not he actually will let him in when he does. He knocks on Draco’s door Sunday evening. Draco’s spent most of the day in bed reading but he’s extremely glad he got up an hour ago to shower and get dressed as he makes his way downstairs to answer the door.

It feels distinctly weird, even though they’ve been meeting up for weeks. There’s just something very deliberate about allowing Potter into his space, though Potter doesn’t seem to feel the same way as he comes right in as soon as Draco opens the door and starts talking about something completely random and irrelevant, some Muggle sports game that Draco doesn’t really know anything about. It gives Draco a second to breathe at least, to realise that this is just Potter, and then to wonder when on earth Potter’s idiotic rambling became comforting to him.

He leads them through to the kitchen, offering Potter a drink which he accepts, looking around at the room. Draco feels himself tense, unsure how Potter will react. He watches Potter’s eyes take in the marble countertops, the huge window over the sink, the dining table to the left, pushed up against the wall. Potter doesn’t look impressed, but he doesn’t look disgusted either, or like he’s judging Draco. His face is just sort of quietly amused and Draco can’t stand not knowing what he’s thinking.

“What?” he asks, keeping his voice level as he fills the kettle.

Potter pulls himself up onto the kitchen island — ignoring the six chairs around the dining table and the two breakfast bar stools, the absolute heathen — and sits there, socked feet swinging. Draco doesn’t remember him taking his shoes off.

“It’s just funny. I mean, it’s what I expected, but.” He laughs a bit, which is still as awful as the first time Draco heard it. “You’re trying to live like a Muggle but you have this crazy expensive house in Notting Hill. Most Muggles our age can barely afford a corridor with a bed and a toilet in it. Hell, most _wizards_ our age can’t afford to move out of their parents’ house.”

And Draco suddenly isn’t in the mood, not for Potter’s opinion on how Draco should be living his life or the way he looks with his hair still damp and curling from the rain. Why he doesn’t just cast a drying charm is beyond Draco, _he’s_ not the one who’s halfway to giving up magic altogether, and it’s distracting. He’d been right not to want Potter in his house; Potter makes him all unstable and he doesn’t like feeling that way here.

“I can’t change that I have money, Potter. I’m not going to throw it away or ignore it. And I’m working, aren’t I? I’m not sitting around the Manor comfortably pissing it away like I thought I was destined to do for the first fifteen years of my life.” He stops before he tells Potter how uncomfortably close he is to the truth, about the sick feeling the money gives Draco now, before he confesses how the first thing he’d done after buying this place was donate a huge sum to a Muggle hospital— just picked one at random because the Muggles had hundreds, apparently. Draco was born rich, he doesn’t know how to be anything else. But it doesn’t mean he can’t do something good with it, for himself, for his family and absolutely not to fucking impress Harry Potter or anyone else.

He switches lanes into accusation so fast he can see the whiplash on Potter’s face. “ _You_ have money. You have an inheritance and a bloody great wizarding house in Islington, Potter — I know Muggle London too and it’s hardly roughing it, is it? — and a house elf and— and everyone knows Order of Merlins come with cash sums.”

Potter is blinking at him, wary and attractive in the glow from Draco’s kitchen lights. He moves as if he’s going to hold up his hands in a placating gesture but thinks better of it and tucks them under his thighs instead. 

There’s a pause, which feels a bit heavy, and Draco turns to get mugs out of his cupboard so that he has a reason to look away. 

“You don’t have to bite my head off every two minutes.” Potter says after a while, to Draco’s back. He doesn’t sound angry, just a little sad and tired, which only makes Draco angrier. He’s horrified to see his hands shake as he gets out tea bags and pours water. Potter has a way of bringing any emotion in Draco to the surface and turning it up to a ten until Draco can’t help but let it explode out of him. It’s horribly inconvenient.

“Where would we be if I didn’t, Potter?” He’s pleased his voice comes out biting. Potter doesn’t answer and eventually Draco has to turn around to give him the tea.

///

June shifts into July, warm but increasingly wetter, and Draco doesn’t mean to invite Potter to meet his friends but it happens anyway. In fact, no one really invites him at all, Potter just happens to be there when Jenny tells Draco that her friend is having a birthday thing and that he should come along. Somehow Potter seems to take that she means him as well.

Paul is not happy about letting both Draco and Jenny have a night off at the same time but, as Jenny resolutely points out to him, Draco has worked 50 hour weeks since he started and has never asked for time off before. Paul even tries to convince them to tell Jenny’s friend to come here so they can work and still celebrate but Jenny outright laughs at him and tells him maybe they would if he didn’t charge £20 a cocktail.

Jenny comes over to Draco's the night of, which somehow feels incredibly easier than when Potter came over. She unashamedly gapes at his house and hits him on the arm.

“Why on earth are you working at all, you absolute wanker? If you can afford a place like this!”

Draco grins. He still feels uncomfortable about money sometimes but her easy enthusiasm is catching. She runs between the rooms, commenting on Draco’s taste which isn’t really his taste at all because the place was already furnished when he moved in. “Well, that much is obvious,” Jenny says when he tells her. “It’s gorgeous Draco, but it looks like a museum.”

He laughs and lets her ramble on, telling him where he should move things and what colour to paint his walls. She’s impressed by his sound system at least, immediately attaching her MP3 player — Draco hadn’t even known you could do that — and putting on something loud and bubbly. Then she drags hims upstairs to get dressed.

///

It’s so hot in this bar that Draco feels breathless, his skin sticky, but he’s having more fun than he has in weeks. It’s more of a club than a bar, really, and Potter hasn’t shown up; Draco’s holding on to the hope that maybe he might not at all.

He feels weirdly young, not like he doesn’t belong here, but in a way that feels like someone’s taken a weight off his shoulders. Jenny’s friends are loud and funny, surprisingly easy to talk to, especially when most of their conversations are half-shouted over the music and loosened by several drinks. And Draco likes dancing, he’s known that since he was a kid and would spin everyone from his mother to Pansy to unwilling house-elves around the Manor ballrooms, tripping over his own feet and giggling. He’s got better at it, but it still feels almost the same, giddy and second nature, the music thrumming through his body. People are drawn to him when he dances, he can feel it.

Potter turns up when they’re crowded near the bar, Draco dragged off the dance floor to do shots with the birthday girl. They don’t really taste of anything but they burn his throat and build on the warmth already curling in his stomach, the swell in his chest at being pressed here, sweaty and surrounded and sort of stupidly happy.

“Happy birthday,” Potter says and he smiles his charming, Chosen One, front-page-of-the-Prophet smile so that Draco is momentarily stunned and Jenny’s friend laughs and pulls Potter in for a hug, kissing his cheek. She’s quite drunk. Draco feels hot and annoyed all of a sudden. He supposes he’s quite drunk too.

Potter’s made a bit of an effort, at least. He’s still in a t-shirt but it’s dark and fitted close to his body and his jeans are tight, no rips to be seen. He turns his smile on Draco, hair falling in his face, the grin dropping into something softer and easier that makes Draco want to grin right back, so he does.

“Sorry I’m late,” Potter half-yells over the music. Draco waves his apology away, it’s not like it’s _his_ birthday. Potter smells good as well, really good, Draco doesn’t think they’ve been this close since— he can’t remember when.

He looks at Draco, really looks, and touches Draco’s cheek. “Is that glitter?” He sounds delighted.

Draco feels himself flush, his skin no doubt pinkening under the glitter Jenny had smeared there and shoves Potter’s hand away, though he can’t quite get rid of the smile on his face. “Maybe,” he yells back, and then, emboldened by the alcohol, grabs a drink in one hand and Potter’s wrist in the other before he can think better of it and drags him off onto the dance floor.

There’s a lot more shots after that and a lot more dancing, Draco dances with half the bar it feels like, though mostly it must just be Jenny’s friends. Draco’s feeling it a bit now, enough that his body is loose and hot, enough that he stops thinking of them as Jenny’s friends and starts thinking of them as his, enough that he’s reading things into Potter’s eyes on him, more than is probably actually there. Potter is an awful fucking dancer, it’s painful to watch.

He gets distracted for a while because the DJ puts some boyband on and Jenny practically screams at him, half-jumping onto his back and then sliding off, spinning him so they can dance together. His shoes keep sticking to the floor and everything is so funny all of a sudden, his face hurts from smiling. When he feels someone press up against his back he thinks nothing of it, the crowd is close and rowdy. He spots Potter back over by the bar chatting to someone as he turns around.

The guy behind him is grinning, his eyebrows raised as he takes in Draco’s glittery face, though he doesn’t look mocking. His gaze is appreciative and his mouth opens on a laugh as Draco raises his own eyebrows. Then they’re dancing together and it feels different, Draco can’t figure out how or why, only that it does. There’s something intentional about it that he’s encouraging without really thinking about it, the air between them charged. It doesn’t feel like a surprise when the guy leans in and Draco’s mind flickers to Potter for a split-second before their lips meet and then he’s not thinking at all, only tasting, his hands pulling automatically.

He's not doing it to get Potter’s attention, though his thoughts keep circling back to him for some reason. The idea that Potter would ever even consider— it’s not something Draco lets himself think about. Potter has a girlfriend still, anyway, maybe? He doesn’t actually know. And Draco has— this apparently, which is fun enough.

He lets himself be kissed, let’s large, strong hands grip his hips and moves his body into it. This man tastes like cheap alcohol and Draco would know, he works with expensive alcohol now, and he can hear someone whistling nearby, probably Jenny, but it’s lost in the music.

The man pulls back and says something. Draco can only pant back at him because he's missed it; it really is too loud to hear. Not that the man seems to mind, only laughing slightly and hooking a finger through one of Draco’s belt loops. He has a kind face, which is an odd thing for Draco to notice but now he’s done it and he can’t stop thinking it.

Distantly, he can feel a heat on the back of his neck that he knows is Potter’s gaze, but it fades in the overwhelming press of the crowd as the man leads Draco over to the back corner where the toilets are. Draco isn’t really sure what he’s doing but he’s not _that_ drunk and something in him feels savagely good at doing this, for doing something because he wants it, just because it’ll feel good, like any other person in this club. It feels good to be wanted like this, on a basic level, for his face and the way he looks in his clothes, the way he moves his hips.

He’s not exactly experienced — what with the disaster of sixth year and then the psychopath living in his house, he’s barely kissed anyone, let alone anything more. But it’s easy, so easy Draco wants to laugh, though he knows through the alcohol haze that would probably not be a good idea. Still, he can’t help but hide a smile against this stranger’s cheek as he finds them an empty stall and locks the door. It’s a bit ridiculous, he can appreciate the cliche of it, but in a nice, freeing way that makes him feel young and stupid. The man has stubble all along his jaw and Draco likes the feel of it on his skin more than he thought he would.

When he gets a hand in Draco’s trousers Draco makes a noise that’s embarrassingly loud but the guy swallows it, nipping Draco’s lip and tightening his grip until Draco feels like his knees might give out. He probably should have asked for a name but it’s a bit late now. He can feel the press of the man’s cock against his hip and he has the presence of mind to push him back enough to reciprocate. He has zero idea if he’ll even be any good at this, but his plan to pretend he knows what he’s doing in the hopes that he’ll find he does seems as good as any.

In the end, it’s nothing incredible — it feels good, mind-numbingly good, to have someone else’s hand on him, but it’s also frantic and messy and a little dirty. When they’ve both come, the guy wipes hand on his jeans — Draco makes an active effort not to wrinkle his nose — winks, and leaves. They didn’t say one word to each other.

Draco stays there, leaning against the graffitied wall, waiting for— he doesn’t know. To feel bad? Wrong? It doesn’t come. He doesn’t feel much different. It’d felt good and now it was over and he’d probably never see that man again. Nothing to write home about — and he snorts as he imagines his mother reading _that_ in a letter after weeks of Draco ignoring her owls — but he doesn’t feel guilty like he expected. Which is nice, he guesses. He shakes his head and goes to wash his hands.

When he emerges from the toilets and pushes through the crowd to find his group, there are several embarrassing shouts and slaps on his back, which is horrifying but endurable with the help of another drink from the bar. Potter is nowhere to be seen, not that Draco is in any way surprised.

He drinks a bit more, dances a bit more, props Jenny up a bit more and more as the night goes on. By the end of it they’re both pretty pissed, they all are, but Draco seems to have the most control over his body. Whilst this is fun, there’s still a small part of him that can’t let himself lose control completely. He helps Jenny out into the darkness of the stupidly early morning and into a cab, grateful for the warm weight of her head against his shoulder as he leans against the cold glass of the window and watches the streets pass on the way home.

///

He doesn’t see Potter at all the next week. He can’t bring himself to be surprised, or to try and decipher the look Jenny gives him when she comes down the morning after their night out and sits at his kitchen table, hands wrapped gratefully around a mug of coffee. She doesn’t try to talk to him about it, which he loves her desperately for.

On Sunday morning, after an annoyingly boring week of working and trying to figure out whether the odd feeling in his stomach is guilt at what happened or not, Draco’s sitting on the floor of one of his bedrooms, trying to decide if he can be bothered to actually paint the wall now he’s got all the supplies. He’d expected the Muggle shop he’d gone to yesterday to be terrifying but instead found it oddly calming. The high shelves and endless squares of paint samples made him feel like he was the only one there, though it was busy, full of frazzled looking families.

The sun is out again, though pale and watery, and the light falls on the floorboards in a warm square. He has his feet stuck in it, watching the dust move in the air, listening to the woman on the radio talk about some band he hasn’t heard of, when he hears the knocking. He almost doesn’t let himself hope but no one else really comes to his house. At this point he really should just give Potter a bloody key so he doesn’t have to go down three floors every time. Although, Potter could quite easily cast an Alohomora — Draco doesn’t have any wards up. It’s weird that Potter doesn’t do that actually, now he thinks about it.

He raises his eyebrows when he opens the door and finds Potter in full robes again, head shining with sweat.

“Hello,” he says, sounding like a bit of a prick, but what the fuck else is he supposed to say?

“What? I mean, hi,” Potter says distractedly and then, “Why didn’t you tell me about the money?” He sounds accusatory, which is just fucking ridiculous for a number of reasons. Why does Draco tell him anything? He doesn’t owe him; they’re apparently not the friends Draco thought they were close to being if Potter can’t be bothered to talk to him for an entire week. Also, Draco has no idea what Potter’s talking about, as usual, because he’s shown up to yell at Draco with no pre-cursor and he tells Potter as such.

Potter looks like he doesn’t believe that for a second, but Draco is genuinely confused. He thought maybe— well, he assumed Potter might be pissed at him, but he doesn’t know what money has to do with any of it.

“No idea? No idea why there’s a _ward_ in _Great Ormond Street Hospital_ named after you?” It takes Draco a second to put the pieces together and when he gets it he groans. He hadn’t donated anonymously — he hadn’t felt the need, seeing as no one in the Muggle world knew who he was and ok, maybe he wanted the Malfoy name attached to something good for once, but he hadn’t thought they’d do— that. He hadn’t asked them to, he’d just given them the money.

“Why were you even in a Muggle hospital?” he asks, in lieu of actually answering.

Potter waves the question away impatiently. “We’re still tracking down Muggles who got hurt in the war and ended up in their own hospitals. It’s a nightmare actually, their doctors have no idea how to deal with magical injuries, the Obliviators have been working overtime and the kids, you know, they remember everything. Obviously the adults think they’re confused or making it up, but.” He stabs a finger in Draco’s face. “That’s not the point.”

Draco sighs and starts walking up the stairs. He does not want to think about Potter’s job or about victims of war, especially not Muggle children, which he knows makes him weak and a coward but he doesn’t really feel like being sick before lunch today. “I don’t know what to tell you, Potter. I gave them some money.”

Potter is following behind him; Draco can hear him heavy on the stairs. “So you’re throwing money around to get a little clout? Just like your dad used to?”

The jab is meant to hurt and Draco has to count to five in his head before he can respond, because actually that is part of it, though not in the way Potter thinks, and he hates himself for it. Everything feels off; they haven’t spoken in days and now they're fighting like they're back at school . “No, I’m—. I felt like doing something with it. It was just sitting there.”

They reach the bedroom Draco had been in before Potter had tried to knock his front door down. The radio is still playing, something upbeat and completely at odds with the tense atmosphere that stretches between them. Draco fiddles with the dial until it’s quieter.

Potter seems to take in his appearance for the first time — his soft jogging bottoms, the long sleeves of his t-shirt pushed up. He looks at Draco like he’s an arithmancy problem he has absolutely no idea how to even begin figuring out. He does that a lot, Draco notices.

“You’re painting?” he says, in a classic display of his ability to state the obvious. He takes in the pots on the floor, the pan with the roller. “Without magic? You’re painting a room by hand and you gave a small fortune to a Muggle hospital just because you felt like it?” His face has shifted and the look he’s giving Draco now is worse, worse than the quiet contemplation, worse than the anger. He looks— there’s something too tender in his face.

Draco makes a noise of frustration. Between the two of them, moods can still change in split seconds. “Make up your bloody mind, Potter! Either I’m still a dangerous idiot with some nefarious plan to gain back favour or I’m a saint who cares deeply about the children! Either way I don’t know why you’re so interested!”

Potter opens his mouth and closes it again, looking like he doesn’t know the answer to that question either. Draco can sense they both know this isn’t really about the money or Draco choosing not to use magic. The weight of unsaid words feels thick on his tongue.

All he knows is he really can’t bare Potter looking at him with any sort of admiration right now. It feels wrong after seventeen years of mutual glaring followed by barely a month of tentative almost-acceptance. And he doesn’t deserve it, anyway. He’s not doing anything radical. Trying to stop being the complete bastard you were raised to be is hardly cause for the saviour of the bloody wizarding world to look at you like that, all wide eyes and slightly open mouth. His teeth are so white.

“Look,” Draco rubs a hand over his face. He wonders if there’s paint on his forehead, he’d kept pushing his hair back earlier when he was prising the cans open with a fork. “I’m not trying to— I don’t know, make up for what I did. I don’t think it’s possible to do that.” He sees Potter’s eyes widen slightly and realises the potential for double meaning in what he's said, hurrying to continue because they’re talking about the _war_ here, not what Draco did last weekend and whether or not that’s any of Potter’s concern.

“This isn’t some kind of redemption story, Potter, God, I’m just— I’m trying, ok? For fuck’s sake, I’m being selfish!" It feels good to raise his voice. The house is so big it feels too quiet sometimes, when it's only him there. "Maybe you’re right, maybe I wanted the Malfoy name to mean something more to someone than prejudice and violence. I just want to try and figure out who the hell I am when you take away all the bullshit that’s been ingrained into me since birth and I want to finish painting this room and then I want to— I want you to bloody leave so I can order some food for lunch and watch Twin Peaks because I sort of love it even though I have no clue what’s going on half the time!”

Potter looks bewildered, like he often does when Draco forgets himself and lets words come out without thinking about each one. It’s very easy to do that around Potter. A laugh bubbles up and Draco viciously hates the way it lights up Potter’s face. He digs his fingernails into his palms. “Twin Peaks?” Potter says, and Draco hears the peace offering in the tone of his voice and hates that too.

“It’s critically acclaimed,” he snaps, bending to pick up the paint roller.

“Right,” Potter says and Draco knows he’s smiling even though he can’t see him. There’s a rustle and then Potter’s next to him, his own sleeves rolled up, robe discarded, the spare roller in one hand. Draco rolls his eyes and supposes this means he’ll have to order double his usual later. Potter can bloody well pay for it too if he’s so obsessed with money and what Draco chooses to spend it on.

“Do you believe in God?” Potter asks, suddenly, randomly, like the lunatic he is.

“Do I—? Potter, what?” Draco is so blindsided he doesn’t even notice the paint dripping off his roller onto the sheet he’d put down over the floorboards.

Potter shrugs, starting on the wall. “I just noticed you say it a lot. I didn’t think wizards were religious.”

“Most of us aren’t.” Draco’s shocked into answering. “It’s just a— I must have just picked it up from work.” He hadn’t even noticed, but he supposes he has been adopting Muggle phrases without thinking about it. Potter doesn’t say anything else and Draco assumes that’s the end of that. He shakes his head as he turns back to the wall. Even though they haven’t actually talked about last weekend, and they’re pretending Potter hadn’t gone silent on him all week, the air between them feels clearer now.

They work in silence for a while, Draco — very graciously, he thinks — refrains from criticising Potter’s technique and lets him make an utter mess of his half of the wall. It’s only the base coat, Draco can paint over it later. He gets so lost in the steady rhythm of it that he’s pulled out of a reverie when Potter breaks the silence again saying, lightly: “You know, I think you’re trying very hard to convince me you’re not a good person. And I think you spent most of your life trying very hard to convince everyone that you’re a bad person.”

“For God’s sake, Potter, don’t get all philosophical on me,” Draco says because his heart has sped up and it feels like it’s in his throat. And then he turns up the radio so that Potter won’t say anything else at all, especially not things like that, and Draco won’t be tempted to believe him.

It starts raining again by the time they finish the wall, drops falling against the window pane and making the room cosy and close and Draco can’t exactly send Potter out in that, can he, so he orders two portions of Chinese and they eat it cross legged on his living room floor, backs to the sofa. Potter will not stop asking questions about what the fuck is going on in Twin Peaks. Draco shushes him to cover up the fact that he’s not entirely sure either, only that he likes the music and it’s easy to forget about his own life when he’s immersed in the world on the screen. He’s understanding more and more about Muggles every day. It would be significantly easier to lose himself in the story if Potter weren’t right there, however, dropping noodles on his t-shirt and telling Draco he has shit taste in telly.

///

They fall pretty quickly back into their old routine from when Potter leaves his house that Sunday, after half a season of Twin Peaks and way too much chow mein, the truce somehow reinstated, though maybe slightly shakier than before. They’re not arguing as much as they used to but there’s something new and careful between them again, so that Draco almost unconsciously starts thinking of this not-quite-friendship with Potter in two halves, the time before and after that week of silence.

He also finds himself noticing more about Potter, the way his cheek dimples on one side when he smiles or how he’s literally incapable of eating anything without spilling it on himself, always licking bits of sauce off his hand absentmindedly. Draco’s not supressed enough to pretend he’s not attracted to Potter but it doesn’t feel like a huge, overwhelming realisation, more like a fact he’s known for a long time. It’s irrelevant somehow, just something he’s aware of. Potter’s mentioned Ginny a couple of times anyway, along with his other friends, just in passing, though it makes Draco’s heart tighten for a second every time.

Still, Potter’s infuriating and when they do inevitably slip into small arguments it feels sharper than before, harsh words quicker to slip out, leaving Draco as confused as ever.

In between seeing Potter and being annoyed at Potter and trying not to think about Potter in the shower or in bed at night, Draco talks to Paul and drops a shift so that he has another day off. It’s not a Saturday, so he still doesn’t really have a weekend, but he likes having time off in the middle of the week. It’s somehow more satisfying to walk around the city on a Wednesday and see people shut up in offices whilst he wanders into shops and sits in cafes. He’s even half-toying with the idea of taking some kind of class, though he doesn’t know what. When he mentions it to Potter, he’s so enthusiastic it almost puts Draco off, like he thinks Draco should be doing something more worthwhile with his time than bartending. The logical part of him knows that’s not really what Potter means, but both of them are stubborn enough to read what they want from the other when it comes to disagreements.

It annoys him so much that he heads to south London on Sunday, aware that Potter knows his days off and hopefully won’t know where to find him. Anyway, it’s an intermittently sunny day and he likes the south of the city just as much as the north, he likes Brixton and Peckham even, sometimes, though this morning he gets off at Clapham and walks until he’s at the common.

It’s nice, lying on his back on the grass, surrounded by groups of teenagers drinking and families with children. One woman he walked past had half her clothes off, desperately trying to catch some sun, though it’s not making much of an appearance from behind the clouds. Draco likes these spaces in London, these little pockets of trees and greenery. It’s so far removed from wizarding Britain, or what he’s seen of it anyway, nothing like the lonely, isolated beauty of Hogwarts nor the bustle of Diagon Alley. He likes that in Muggle London he can walk down a street full of huge buildings, their glass and steel stretching into the sky, and suddenly be in a park, likes that he can lie amongst trees and still hear the sound of never-ending cars nearby.

It reminds him of being a child, back when the Manor was magic and home and never-ending rooms to explore, ever-expanding gardens to run through. His mother had spent so much time out there during the warmer months of his childhood; it was the only time Draco ever saw her let her composed front drop, when she’d roll up her sleeves and not mind if there was mud on her skin. The generations of Malfoys that had cultivated the land in Wiltshire made for a mismatch of wilderness, perfectly shaped flowerbeds running onto thickets of woodland or fields of tall grasses, orchards that had overgrown with no one to care for them properly, and streams that you could only find if you took a certain path from the walled vegetable gardens. 

He hasn’t thought about home in weeks and it makes pain bloom in his chest, on the tips of his fingers and on the soles of feet that remember what it felt like to be nine and running through the whole world on your back doorstep. He can even smell the deep, wet earth smell of it all if he tries, though it’s overpowered quickly by the present-day smells of car-fumes and warm beer.

The red blur behind Draco’s eyelids darkens; the sun must have given up for good and retreated behind the clouds. Except then a foot prods his side and he’s blinking up into the face of Potter who’s standing there lit from behind by the sun, his body casting a shadow over Draco.

“Slumming it a bit, aren’t we?” Potter says instead of hello. He never bloody says hello and Draco can’t blame his lack of manners on being raised by Muggles anymore, he’s obviously that much of an uncouth idiot all on his own.

“South of the river?” Potter pulls a face of exaggerated horror and flops unceremoniously down beside Draco, leaning back on his arms and tilting his face up, offering no explanation as to how he even knew where to find Draco. He’s wearing a t-shirt with short sleeves and honestly, it’s not that warm, the first sign of sun and half of Britain is ready to get its kit off. Draco scowls at Potter’s forearms and refuses to sit up, closing his eyes again.

“I like Clapham,” he says, truthfully, still feeling that stupid bit of pride he always does that he knows the names of places and things in the Muggle world now. 

Potter hums. His legs are kicked out in front of him, one foot tilted so that the toe of his shoe is almost touching Draco’s shin. He wishes he wasn’t so— painfully aware of Potter all the time. It’s like his body is tuned to the other man’s every movement.

“What are you thinking about?” Potter asks, after a few minutes.

“I was thinking about home, before you showed up,” he says, because whilst they’ve been quiet he wasn’t thinking anything much at all, which makes a nice change.

“The Manor?” Potter shifts forward and then lies back next to Draco. He must turn his head because Draco can feel his gaze on his cheek but he keeps his own eyes up on the clouds moving over the sky above them.

“Mhm,” Draco considers. He supposes he had been thinking of the Manor, but also of Hogwarts, of London. Thinking of his childhood house as home is a knee-jerk reaction, but how true that is anymore, Draco isn’t sure. Sometimes he aches for its long corridors and expansive rooms. Sometimes he can’t imagine ever going back there. Sometimes he wonders how he ever survived anywhere that wasn’t his house now, this place he’s carved out for himself in a world he never expected to be a part of.

“It was different, you know, before the war,” he says, unsure why he feels the need to defend the Manor to Potter. He’d be surprised if either of them could set foot in it without wanting to throw up, these days. But it’s become easy to tell Potter things, he’s realised, despite all this current awkwardness between them. Easy to talk at him about the things he thinks and never says out loud. Maybe it’s because he’s the only one Draco can talk to, and he realises just how depressingly true that is, in that moment, lying on Clapham Common. He doesn’t have anyone else, not someone who knows both who he was and who he’s maybe trying to be now.

“I can’t image it,” Potter says, his voice hardening a bit. Draco can’t blame him. “I can’t really— it doesn’t seem like the kind of place to grow up in.”

“It used to be less—,” Draco finds he can’t finish that sentence. “It was exciting when I was a kid, with all these rooms to play in. I had everything I wanted. Yeah, dad kept a lot of dark shit around, but he was less blatant about it back then, and the peacocks were a bloody nightmare, pecked me half to death every time I went near them, but. The grounds were amazing. Probably still are, I think most of the— destruction was contained to the house itself.”

Potter snorts at that and it still sounds wrong, annoyed. He’s tensed up, but he was the one who asked, Draco’s only answering his question. “Death Eaters not fancy a stroll through the gardens?” he asks and Draco’s getting good at reading him now. He falls back onto sarcasm and provocation anytime they get anywhere close to painful topics, they both do. But Draco’s trying this whole honesty thing so he doesn’t rise to it.

“I think they only left the house to do whatever— Voldemort told them to.” Draco can’t remember if he’s ever said the name out loud before. It sounds ridiculous here though, amongst all these Muggles. Doesn’t stop the back of his neck prickling with sweat.

Maybe it’s shock at Draco’s honesty, but Potter visibly relaxes beside him. Or, not visibly, because Draco’s eyes are closed again, but he senses a little of the tension bleed out of Potter’s body. “Yeah,” he says, which isn’t really a response, and they lie there together until somebody accidentally kicks their ball at Potter and he sits up laughing, throwing it back over to them and then pulling a face at Draco when he looks down at the dirty mark the ball’s left on his t-shirt.

“C’mon,” he says, stretching and standing up. Draco doesn’t watch his t-shirt ride up over his lower back. “There’s a tapas place round here that I’ve been dying to try out.”

///

In hindsight, Draco thinks maybe he needed things to come to a head, which is probably why he invites Potter out for dinner at distinctly date-like restaurant the week after. They’ve grabbed food together before but they usually meet places, or Potter shows up at his house to drag him out for a walk or lunch or some gallery he’s decided he needs to see. Their interactions are usually instigated by Potter, deliberately casual in a way that is anything but, so this feels like he’s breaking some unspoken rule, like it’s going to change something, just how it felt when he let Potter into his house that first time. But he needs that, is the thing. He feels like he might go a little crazy if they stay in this weird half-friendly half-antagonistic almost-something-more limbo they’ve got going on at the minute, especially if they’re never going to acknowledge what they’re really thinking. Not that he knows what Potter’s thinking, but he still catches that look in his eyes more often than not.

To his surprise, Potter doesn’t seem weirded out by the suggestion and meets him at the restaurant on Wednesday night. He even looks like he’s dressed up a bit, though that’s probably because Draco had bitched at him that it was nice place and that maybe he should try and make an effort for once if he didn’t want to completely embarrass them.

Truthfully, he has actually been wanting to come here for a while, he read a review of it in a magazine and has heard customers chatting about it. It’s cosy inside, elegant but not stuffy with it, someone playing something jazzy and soft on a piano somewhere and the lights dim and warm. The wine is good, the food even better when it comes, and it's easy, amazingly, not weird at all, even when he accidentally brushes Potter’s leg under the table. Yeah, ok, he looks good, Draco can’t help but stare at him, but the conversation flows freely between them and they only argue once about the correct placement of napkins. It’s not a date, but if it was it’d be the best Draco’s ever had.

They split the bill and decide to go to a bar across the street without even really talking about it, somehow on the same wavelength for once and not really ready for the night to end. Draco wants to laugh at how this feels simpler than it ever has been with the two of them. 

“Our waiter was definitely flirting with you,” Potter says once they’re at the bar, both with glasses of whisky, wiggling his eyebrows even as something darkens in his eyes. Draco doesn’t even normally like whisky but of course tonight it goes down smoothly, sweet and oaky. 

He hadn’t picked up on that at all, but he laughs now, dismissing it with a wave of his free hand.

“He was!” Potter insists, laughing too. “And I can count about five people who haven’t taken their eyes off you since we walked in here.” His voice has an edge to it now, for the first time tonight, not angry, but smooth and charged, something burning just beneath the surface. It makes Draco feel hot all over and he ducks his head. The wine from their meal is making his head swim pleasantly and he doesn’t stop Potter from ordering another for both of them when he drains his whisky glass.

“I can’t help that my arse looks incredible in this outfit,” he shoots back and God, that was flirty but it still feels easy, especially when Potter only rolls his eyes good-naturedly and bumps their shoulders together. Draco’s skin burns through his shirt where it touches Potter’s.

The bar gets noisier around them as they finish another round and it feels natural when they leave together, both heading on foot in the direction of Draco’s place because it’s not far and the night is warm. He almost feels daring enough to take Potter’s hand, though he stops himself.

It’s quiet between them as they walk, Draco leading them on a bit of a convoluted route to avoid the busier streets and to drag out the night. Potter probably sees straight through him but when Draco looks at him his face has gone serious, his eyes distant even as they’re fixed on the pavement beneath them. His expression pokes a tiny hole of doubt into the balloon that seems to have inflated itself inside Draco’s chest.

“I have to work tomorrow,” Potter says on a sigh, and he sounds miserable all of a sudden.

Draco tentatively knocks their shoulders together, but Potter doesn’t really react. “Ugh, I know,” he says, aware his voice sounds strained and overly cheerful. “Me too, and I really can’t be arsed.”

Potter doesn’t smile, just shakes his head slightly. “No, I mean—” he cuts himself off, grimacing a bit. “You don’t get it.”

Draco’s suddenly cold, like his mood is linked intrinsically with Potter’s and it’s been dragged down.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Potter must hear the coolness of his tone because he looks at Draco then, his face hardening. Draco has no idea what’s happened, how it’s gone wrong suddenly, only that he’s confused and can feel himself getting angrier as he watches Potter’s face close off.

“Nothing, never mind.” Potter rubs a hand over his face, then, quieter, mostly to himself, “What am I even doing?” except Draco hears it pretty fucking clearly and feels the night well and truly flip on its head, the air now cold and the alcohol fogging his senses, heightening his frustration.

“Potter,” he bites out. They’ve come to a standstill down a random street adjacent to Draco’s own, rows of dark windows on either side, bins out in front of doors. “What was that supposed to mean?” he repeats.

“Nothing!” Potter matches his tone. “You just don’t know what it’s like, back home, at work, it’s—” he makes an angry noise.

“Tell me then, Potter,” Draco snaps. “What exactly am I not getting here? I thought we—” but Potter cuts him off.

“You don’t have any fucking idea, Draco!” And when did he start calling Draco by his first name? Draco can’t remember. “You’ve just left it all behind and the rest of us are trying to deal with it! I spend time with you and I forget, it’s so easy, like the war never even happened and then I have to go back and look into the faces of people I love everyday and know that there’s a part of them that hates me for being the reason they’ve lost their families and friends.”

Draco doubts that anyone actually blames Potter for that, he’s the one who ended the war for Christ's sake, not the one who started it. He’s so angry, angrier than Draco’s seen him in years, so different from how he was in the bar not fifteen minutes ago, drunk and flushed and looking about two seconds from putting his foot through someone’s front garden wall. It’s almost frightening, except Draco’s stuck on Potter admitting that whatever the two of them have is easy, even when the rest of his life has apparently gone to shit.

Still, Potter’s deluding himself if he thinks Draco’ll let him take out all of this on him, or that Draco isn’t dealing with enough shit of his own. “Oh, and you don’t think I know what that feels like? You don’t think that’s exactly how people would look at me if I went back, Potter? Except a hundred times worse because a lot of it actually _was_ my fucking fault. You ended the war. I played a huge fucking part in starting it.”

He’s breathing heavily, chest heaving. Potter’s just staring at him, his eyes wide. The fierceness in his gaze drains out until he doesn’t look angry anymore, not at Draco, or, no, more like he never was angry at Draco in the first place, but at himself, at how everything’s turned out, and he’s just now realising it. He takes a step towards Draco.

“I don’t get it,” he says, voice softer now, but still shaky. “I mean— it’s _us_. And you, you could have _anyone_ and the way that guy in the club _touched_ you, fuck—” He’s babbling and then all of a sudden he’s not, he’s kissing Draco and Draco doesn’t know how they got from one to the other, he can only kiss back, hands planted on Potter’s shoulders. When Potter pulls back for air, Draco doesn’t let him say whatever thought he can see forming in Potter’s eyes, instead he nips his bottom lip and drags him down the street until he can turn onto his own. They’re stumbling because Potter seems determined to keep his lips attached to Draco’s neck even as they walk.

Draco can hear a ragged noise that he thinks might be coming from him. Potter tastes like salt for some reason when their lips meet again and he presses Draco up against his own front door so that the ornamental knocker is digging into his back, right between his shoulder blades.

He has to shove Potter back a couple of times before he detaches himself enough for Draco to get his key out.

Surprisingly, Potter holds off until they’re upstairs, if pressing himself completely along Draco’s back can be called holding off, but he mostly keeps his hands to himself until Draco falls, not really thinking, back onto his bed, pulling Potter down with him by the front of his jacket. Their noses bump painfully, but the ache’s quickly lost as Potter captures his mouth again, licking over Draco’s teeth which should be weird and instead makes Draco want to do really embarrassing things like curl his toes and press confessions against Potter’s mouth. Potter tastes like whisky now Draco’s kissed the salt away and like summer, like Draco can taste the heat of his mouth, and his hands won’t stop moving, first in Draco’s hair, then on his shoulders, then down further, pushing up his shirt. It’s too hot in his house but Draco can feel goosebumps on his skin where it’s exposed; he doesn’t push Potter away.

“I need—” Potter says, or rather, gasps, hot, damp air hitting Draco’s skin as he mouths over Draco’s cheek. He doesn’t elaborate but Draco gets it, popping the button on his trousers and wriggling out of them without detaching from Potter, who’s doing the same thing with his own. When they’re down to their shirts and boxers, only two layers of thin, damp fabric between them, Draco feels his hands twist in the sheets, fingers curling in the fabric. He pushes at Potter until he’s the one lying on his back and clambers on top of him and this is better, he can cope with this, with Potter being the one helpless and writing beneath him. It makes him feel less crazy.

Neither of them make a move to take any more clothes off, they just lie there, close as possible, legs tangled, Draco pressing his hips down before he can overthink it. Potter lets out a noise so loud it shocks Draco and cants his hips up desperately. He fits his hands over Draco’s hipbones, holding him there so he can grind their cocks together, the slide hot and rough and better than anything Draco’s ever felt. This isn’t anything like that drunken hand-job from the stranger in the club toilet. Potter’s fingers are definitely going to leave marks on his skin.

“Do you—” Potter starts but Draco doesn’t let him finish. Listening to Potter say things in that breathless voice is too much. He kisses him again, already addicted to this, the taste of Potter. He can’t remember ever kissing someone like this, like he’s drowning and Potter’s mouth is the surface, like he’ll stop breathing if he pulls away. He could lie here for hours, if Potter let him, just doing this, the anticipation burning low in his stomach, prickling on the backs of his knees, even as he feels two seconds away from coming.

Potter gets a little impatient and wriggles around, trying to get Draco to move again where his hips have stilled as he sucks on Potter’s tongue. He breaks away, looks right at Draco through half-lidded eyes as he pulls him down at the hips again, pushes up into Draco’s body. Draco gets a hand onto the bed to prop himself up so he can move properly, get a rhythm going as they slide against each other. There’s no way he’s going to last, not with Potter beneath him panting and nosing at Draco’s cheeks, biting his own lip now that Draco’s released it.

His hands leave Draco’s waist and he throws them up over his head, leaving Draco’s skin momentarily cold before he gets what Potter wants and groans, swears, grips Potter by the wrists and pins him to the bed. Potter pushes against him, tugging, feeling the weight of Draco and Draco lets off a bit, scared to really hold him down, but Potter growls and fixes him with this look, until Draco tentatively applies more pressure again, keeping him there against the mattress.

He loses track of everything for a bit then, his world narrowing down to skin and heat and trying not to hear the things Potter is saying, the words about how good Draco looks, how good he feels. Potter comes first and it’s the choked noise he makes and the almost pained look on his face that sends Draco over the edge too, his lips pressed hard to the middle of Potter’s forehead as he comes in his boxers.

Afterwards, he sits up and gets off Potter, goes to the bathroom for a flannel because if he lies there in his bed for a second longer he won’t be able to get out again. Potter is still on his back when Draco returns, staring up at the ceiling, and his face is so open that he looks inexplicably _young_ and it makes Draco’s chest ache.

“I don’t think I can apparate,” Potter says. Draco doesn’t go over to him, he just stands there in the doorway all sticky and unsure.

“No,” he agrees, carefully. Potter had had quite a bit to drink, they both had, that’s probably why this happened at all. “There’re night buses,” he says, and then, because he really hates himself, apparently, “Or you could stay.”

Potter’s eyes widen comically and he sits up, suddenly looking even more lost and frantic with it, panicked almost. Draco back-tracks quickly, keeping his voice determinedly calm like he’s trying to soothe a wild animal. “Not in here, obviously, I mean. I have guest rooms.”

“Yeah,” Potter says, deflating, scrubbing a hand through his hair. They stay like that, not saying anything else for so much longer that Draco feels the first tendrils of his own panic start to creep in. Just when he’s about to ask Potter what the fuck they’ve just done, what the fuck they think they’re _doing_ , he gets off Draco’s bed and picks up his jeans from the floor and the words die in Draco’s mouth. He watches Potter hesitate for a split-second, then walk over to him. If Potter’s going to kiss him Draco really might lose his mind, but he doesn’t, just reaches a hand out and touches Draco’s face, gently, which is a million times worse, and then walks out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him, leaving Draco to wonder if he’d ever even been there in the first place.

///

When he wakes up the next morning, Draco lies on his back and stares at the ceiling. The room is light and grey, the sky outside paperwhite through the windows. He listens to the traffic outside for as long as he can manage and then he gets up and pulls on socks and a jumper and goes in search of water to ease his dry mouth.

The kitchen is quiet and still, the doors to all the guest bedrooms closed as he walks past, so he breathes easier and doesn’t turn on the light as he fills a glass from the fridge and drinks. It’s early, which means he doesn’t have to be at work for hours. He’s not sure what to do.

He doesn’t even know if Potter’s still here, if he took up Draco’s offer and slept in one of the empty bedrooms, or if he left last night. Maybe he did sleep here and then took off this morning, before Draco woke up. Either way, Draco hopes he’s gone, so he doesn’t have to deal with it, any of it. Not Potter’s look of pity, not him telling Draco it was a mistake, because it was, Draco really can’t see any scenario where Potter doesn’t completely regret what happened. He’s Harry Potter for fucks’ sake, what does he think he’s doing? Draco’s head is full of everything Potter said last night, of images of his face as he left, and then, in spite of himself, of Ginny, God, he doesn’t even know if they’re still together. He feels sick.

He can’t even blame Potter and he hates himself for it, for letting himself remember now how Potter had looked at him last night and shivering, recalling how it had felt to be seen, properly, by someone who knew his past and for the person looking to not turn away in disinterest or spite.

He swears softly in the pale, early morning dimness of the kitchen and then forces himself to go and check the bedrooms, opening the doors without knocking. They’re all empty, beds made, unslept in.

///

They start sleeping together after that. Or, more accurately, Potter starts turning up unannounced at Draco’s house, which is nothing new, and shoving him up against various surfaces, which is. He always leaves straight afterwards. Draco doesn’t try to stop him. Their interactions become almost completely non-verbal and contained entirely to Draco’s house.

He does try to stop Potter from moaning his name though, which he does far too often and it makes Draco feel odd every time. He likes that Potter’s noisy, would happily listen forever to the small, high sounds he makes when Draco jerks him off or the low moans at the back of his throat when Draco lets Potter finger him open slow and sweaty, both of them pressed together in Draco’s bed. But he doesn’t think of Potter as Harry, he won’t, and it feels like one step too far to hear his first name on Potter’s lips after a lifetime of snide surnames and insults.

The first time they fuck, actually fuck, Draco has no idea what he’s doing. He’d expected Potter to want to fuck _him_ because he always seems so preoccupied with Draco’s body, hands always so possessive, but Draco barely has Potter flat on his back on the living room rug, one finger working carefully inside him, amazed that Potter’s even letting him get this far, before Potter is scrabbling, gripping onto Draco’s wrist and panting “More, I need— Inside me, Draco, I need you inside me.” Draco is so shocked he forgets to even be annoyed about the use of his first name. “Ok,” he breathes, not trusting himself to say more than that because he’s sure his voice will shake unacceptably. Potter seems completely out of it as Draco adds another finger, but his eyes are lucid and clear when they snap open and meet Draco’s.

They don’t move to the bedroom, they just do it right there next to Draco’s coffee table. Draco has condoms because he doubts Potter could do any of the charms right now even if he knows them. Draco doesn’t know if he’s done this with anyone else, if he’s _doing_ this with anyone else, present tense, and he definitely does not want to know. After that initial flare of panic he’s put it all out of his head. Potter’s here right now, that’s what Draco’s focussed on, chest heaving and hair damp with sweat where it’s sticking to his face. Draco could call him beautiful in the half-light from the city coming through the windows but he won’t.

It doesn’t last long once they get down to it, completely overwhelming and intense, and it feels so fucking good when Draco first pushes in he thinks he’s going to die for one stupid, dramatic second. Then he’s moving, somehow, and Potter is still making all this noise, he never _shuts up_ and Draco’s going to come in about four seconds flat. He bends to shove his tongue into Potter’s mouth to make him stop, still moving his hips and they finish like that, Potter first when Draco balances with a forearm to the left of his head and gets his other hand on Potter’s cock, Draco following moments after.

Potter falls asleep afterwards, after Draco’s pulled out and found just enough energy to flop sideways, after neither of them have said a word and instead laid there side by side panting up at the high ceiling. It’s— Draco can’t look at Potter there on his rug, all vulnerable and asleep, with his come all over his stomach. He gets up to grab a t-shirt from his bedroom and goes to the kitchen, drinking straight from the tap like he’s never done in his life and then just stands there, assuming Potter will wake up in a few minutes and leave. It’s not like Draco needs to show him out.

Potter does wake up soon, but he pokes his head into the kitchen and stares at Draco, mouth open like he’s going to say something. Draco prays to every god he’s heard of that he doesn’t and they must hear him because Potter just closes his mouth again and Draco hears the front door slam a minute later.

He’s not sure if he expects things to shift between them after that but they don’t, not really. Other than the fact that he can’t get the image of Potter beneath him out of his damn head. They’re not even meeting up to go places like they used to, and Draco gets dizzy thinking about how often the dynamic between them has changed these past weeks.

One night he goes a bit crazy with all the things they’re stubbornly not talking about and walks all the way to Charing Cross after work, managing to find a Prophet recklessly discarded in a bin just outside The Leaky Cauldron, where any Muggle could just pick it up if they were the kind of crazy person who went through bins. Not that Draco could judge — he is, after all, apparently now that kind of person.

It takes him two page turns to find what he’s looking for, a picture of Potter and the Weasley girl — he can’t bring himself to think of her as Ginny anymore, it feels too personal — hand in hand, walking through Diagon Alley, taken just two days ago. He’s sick underneath a lamppost because Potter had showed up this morning and sucked Draco off against the fridge and then left before Draco could even catch his breath, let alone return the favour, so Draco’d dealt with it by mixing himself drinks for his entire shift. He takes the night bus back to his flat and lies down under his covers until he’s over-warm and it’s time to get up again. He hasn’t slept for 38 hours straight when he gets home from work in the early hours of Sunday morning to find Potter on his front step but he doesn’t turn him away like he knows he should, he lets him in and they fuck right there in the hallway. Neither of them have even taken off their shoes. Potter bites, hard, into Draco’s shoulder when he comes, but Draco can still make out his name muffled against the skin. When he’s gone, Draco stands in front of his full-length bathroom mirror and stares at the marks, pressing his fingers into them. He stays in the shower until he comes out pink all over and lightheaded from the steam.

///

Draco is very aware of the end of July coming and going, and with it, Potter’s birthday, not that either of them mention it.

He goes out for food with Jenny, almost tells her everything and then holds back at the last minute. He knows she can sense something’s going on but she doesn’t push it, past a piercing look halfway through lunch and an assurance that she’s there to listen if he ever feels like talking about it. His throat is thick but she only squeezes his hand and goes back to complaining about the latest reality tv show she’s hooked on.

Incredibly, things start to even out as August begins, which Draco hadn’t thought possible. He and Potter slowly talking again like they used to, between clutching at each other with hands and mouths. Draco still has no idea where they stand but it feels like some of the raw desperation has worn off, and he feels himself settle cautiously into yet another new dynamic between them.

He still can’t get enough of Potter’s body, even if Potter refuses to discuss what they’re doing, though more often than not he does stick around after they’ve both finished now, when he can. It’s not perfect but Draco’s overwhelmed with relief that they seem to have got over the whole painful beginning of it. As hot as the overly dramatic emotional sex was, he prefers a Potter who can actually look him in the face again, one who’s gone back to talking about whatever pops into his head with Draco, though never anything serious.

It’s a compromise, and guilt sometimes still niggles at the back of his head, but he’ll take what he can get.

///

“I fucking hate the Aurors,” Potter says, apropos of nothing one morning when they’re lying on Draco’s bedroom floor. He’d come over early, when Draco had barely woken up, and jerked him off as he leant against the kitchen counter, kissing the taste of toothpaste out of his mouth, then followed him upstairs into the shower. It’s weird that they do this in broad daylight; it feels like the kind of thing reserved for late nights or the early hours of the morning, to be hidden in darkness and silence. With Draco’s hours at the bar though they really can’t see each other unless Potter comes over in the daytime. It makes it a lot harder for Draco to pretend he’s fine with this no-label arrangement when Potter is there as soon as he stumbles downstairs, when he can see every inch of his face in the mid-morning sunlight streaming in from the kitchen window as he gets a hand around Draco’s cock.

“Everybody hates their job, Potter,” Draco says, distracted by the fact Potter is instigating a conversation that’s dangerously close to being about something real. He rolls away to try and find clothes — they’d both collapsed there naked after the shower, but Draco’s feeling weird about having his body completely on display. It’s not often he lets Potter see it, scars bared. Potter himself seems completely at ease, lazing around on Draco’s carpet like he’s been carved out of marble or something equally ridiculous. How on earth he’s had the time to bulk up this much since the end of the war, Draco has no idea.

“Do they?” Potter asks, sounding genuinely confused and that makes Draco pause. No, actually, he quite likes his job. He likes meeting people and he likes that mixing drinks is a bit like making potions if he really pretends. “You like _your_ job,” Potter continues with narrowed eyes, like he’d been reading Draco’s mind.

“Yeah, I do.” He finds some boxers and starts pulling them on. “Forget what I said. Most people like their jobs; you should definitely quit.”

“Like it’s that easy,” Potter says, stretching out so that Draco has to turn away to find a shirt or else just stand there staring at the way his body moves.

Draco snorts at that.

“What?” asks Potter, sharply and then, “ _What?_ ” again when Draco only looks at him.

“You’re Harry Potter,” he says, like it’s obvious, which it bloody well is.

“Yeah, I know that, thanks,” Potter grumbles, finally sitting up and holding out a hand. Draco throws him some underwear without thinking and then has a very small three-second panic about letting Harry Potter wear his clothes. They cross these little boundaries every day that keep Draco up at night and Potter seems completely unaware of. He composes himself as Potter says: “Sometimes I think the 'being Harry Potter’ thing is kind of the whole problem.”

And, oh, Draco hadn’t thought about it like that, ever. He’s not about to let Potter bemoan how difficult it is to be famous and loved by everyone, but he also gets it maybe a little bit, in a way he wouldn’t have at the beginning of the summer. After all, he remembers Potter’s face that night in the street, and he sees Potter after he’s been at work, sees the exhaustion and the way his face freezes over into a hard mask whenever he talks about it. It’s a strong mask, the face of the war effort, of the winning side, but it’s a mask all the same. Draco knows a bit about how exhausting putting up a constant front can be.

“Do you want to get some lunch?” he asks, because Potter is standing there looking out of his bedroom window and Draco senses he might not really be in the headspace for processing anything further than the fact he hates his job today. It's promising that he's brought it up. Maybe at some point he’ll be ready to talk about it more. But definitely not with Draco; there are literal lists of people closer to Potter who he should confide in about this. What on earth is Draco supposed to offer him? They don’t do that.

The question is a risk, the first time either of them has suggested going back to how they used to hang out, doing something where they actually have to be clothed. “Alright,” Potter agrees, his eyes still a little distant, and Draco is sure it’s this distraction that stops him second-guessing the invitation.

They don’t talk about Potter’s job as they walk to the Waitrose in Knightsbridge. It’s Draco’s favourite, surrounded by all the tall, clean buildings with flags waving out front and the men in business suits. This is the quietest part of London he’s found, the small streets filled with houses more expensive even than his own, and he doesn’t attempt to break that calm with conversation. Potter follows his lead, though Draco assumes it’s more because he’s lost in thought still than out of any respect for the neighbourhood.

They eat salad with plastic forks sitting in Hyde Park and Draco feels something shift between them again. He wonders if they’ll ever stabilise.

Eventually, with a couple of throwaway stories about work, Potter’s eyes lose that far away look and focus completely on Draco instead. Draco’s not sure if that’s any easier for him to deal with, if he’s completely honest, but at some point he’s started putting Potter’s needs above his own.

///

“I’m having a party,” Potter says, his fingers tight in Draco’s hair.

Draco pulls off of him with a wet sound and raises an eyebrow, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “And you want to talk about that right now, why, exactly?”

“Sorry,” Potter looks a little sheepish, combing absentmindedly through Draco’s hair. “I was just thinking— you know, you could come. If you wanted.”

“Jesus,” Draco says, unable to process that, especially not with the taste of Potter on the back of his tongue. He swallows him down again instead of responding, hollowing his cheeks and tightening his throat in the way he knows will have Potter coming as quickly as possible. Potter makes a sort of yelping sound and jerks up, emptying himself into Draco’s mouth a minute later.

He sags back into the mattress after, tapping Draco’s head until he moves up and Potter can kiss him. “God, you’re good at that,” he murmurs against Draco’s mouth, making Draco laugh breathlessly as he shifts his own hips against Potter’s, rutting his cock into the space where Potter’s hip meets his thigh. Potter hisses at the pressure on his softening dick and rolls them, pressing a small kiss to Draco’s cheek in apology and getting a hand around him.

“Really, though,” he says, like they weren’t just interrupted by one orgasm and Draco isn’t about to come himself. “You should come. To my party, I mean.” He laughs a little.  “You should also come right now. But. You know what I meant.”

He’s in such a good mood today and Draco doesn’t know why but he can’t get enough of it, the way Potter’s face is relaxed and how he’s been here for hours, in Draco’s bed, not rushing off anywhere. He resolutely does not think about the implications of this request, about what going to Potter’s house when there will be other people there actually entails. It’s easier when he can just focus on the feel of Potter’s calloused palm.

“If I say I’ll come will you shut up and actually get me off?” he pants, the pointed raise of his eyebrows sort of lost as his face screws up in pleasure, Potter tightening his fist and ducking to suck one of Draco’s nipples into his mouth.

“Mhm,” he hums, teasing it gently with his teeth because he knows how crazy it drives Draco. Draco isn’t sure how they got to this point, this easy back and forth, this feeling of being comfortable with one another, but he’s not complaining. It’s almost like they’re in an actual relationship these days, except Draco isn’t stupid enough to let himself think that.

“Ok, fine,” Draco says once he’s finished and shoved at Potter to go and get something to clean them up, groaning as his cock twitches valiantly at the sight of Potter licking come off his fingers, grinning cheekily at Draco like he knows exactly what he’s doing. He looks younger without his glasses on. “I’ll come to your bloody party.”

///

When Potter answers the door to Number 12 Grimmauld Place on Saturday night he’s in joggers and his feet are bare. Draco’s gaze gets a bit stuck on the sight of them against the dark floorboards.

“Malfoy,” Potter says and he half laughs for a second, one hand scrubbing through his hair. There’s a tea towel over one of his shoulders. He’s just used Draco’s last name. They haven’t seen each other much this week.

Draco raises an eyebrow in a sort of automatic defence mechanism. He feels weird, exposed, clutching the bottle of wine in his hand and standing there. “Potter.” He pauses. “Not exactly what I’d call party attire but I suppose it was misguided of me to expect anything more from you.”

Potter just stares at him, his face unreadable. There are odd shadows across it from the darkened hallway and the lamppost outside. “The party’s over, Malfoy.” He doesn’t sound annoyed at all. “It’s 3am.” That half laugh again, like he can’t believe Draco’s actually here.

“What kind of party is over before the sun is up, Potter? I knew Gryffindors were boring but that’s just pathetic.” He doesn’t say that he only finished work an hour ago, because Potter knows that. Draco doesn’t know why he invited him in the first place.

Potter looks at him and Draco wonders for a second if he’s going to tell him to go home, but he steps aside as he gestures Draco in, turning away, shaking his head slightly.

Draco follows him down the hall because he can’t think what else to do, part of him sagging in relief that it’s just the two of them. Neither of them had actually talked about the fact that by inviting Draco to a party at his house, Potter had essentially invited him to reunite with their old schoolmates, most of whom Draco has bullied at one point or another.

But Potter is right — clearly the party is over, the house quiet around them, though bearing the unmistakable signs of life only hours previously. There are bottles scattered here and there and an abandoned pack of cards on the floor in front of the fireplace in one room they pass, still smoking gently. The air is warm and close and buzzing with magic, so different from Draco’s cool, safe house that he feels nervous with it, antsy. He’d almost forgotten what being around this much magic felt like.

Potter leads him down the corridor to some stairs, and then down those to the kitchen where a wireless is playing softly. Draco's clearly interrupted Potter half-way through washing up; the sink is full of soapy water. He turns now and leans against the cupboards, eyeing Draco.

Draco feels wrong-footed with their roles reversed. It’s always Potter seeking him out, even now, barging into his house. They don’t do this, _Draco_ doesn’t do this. 

Potter takes the bottle out of his hands, raising it slightly in question but Draco shakes his head. He doesn’t think that adding alcohol to the mess in his head is a wise choice at the minute. Potter only shrugs and puts the bottle on the kitchen counter, not pouring any for himself either.

“Thanks,” he says, and Draco doesn’t know if he’s talking about the wine or the fact that Draco came and suddenly Draco _does_ need a drink, needs to numb his senses a bit because what are they going to do? The party’s over.

“On second thoughts,” he says, forcibly casual, after a minute of intense silence, and moves to grab the bottle. It puts him very close to Potter, who smells so good Draco almost forgets himself and falls onto him. He’s not sure if that’s ok here, they’re playing a game where Draco knows none of the rules, but Potter barely lets him get his hand around the neck of the bottle before he tilts his body, clutching Draco by the hips. His hands are still a bit damp.

He doesn’t move to do anything further than that and the atmosphere feels different, deliberate. This isn’t frantic or fuelled by alcohol or slow and lazy like it sometimes is in Draco’s sunlit bedroom, Potter’s not even kissing him, he’s just holding him there, breathing next to him. It’s not helping with Draco’s whole unstable feeling.

“I’m glad you came,” Potter says, low, his nose very close to Draco’s hair.

Draco tries for a laugh but it comes out too quiet and a bit strangled. “Sorry I’m so late. Work, you know.”

“Yeah,” Potter leans forward the smallest amount, the tip of his nose making contact with the side of Draco’s head. Draco hears him inhale and represses a shudder. “I didn’t really think it through, though I admit I thought people would stick around longer than they did.” He huffs out a laugh. “Guess we’re all getting old.”

“Speak for yourself,” Draco keeps his own words quiet, teasing, matching Potter’s tone. It feels fragile, this moment, though not in the sense that it might shatter at any moment, more like there’s something alive and vulnerable between them, something they need to be careful with, tender.

Draco holds himself impossibly still as Potter presses his mouth so, so gently to the very top of his cheekbone, where his hairline meets his skin. There’s a beat where Draco feels warm, something like safety beating in the pulse of his neck. Then Potter shifts, pulling himself up onto the counter behind him and moving Draco so that he’s between Potter’s spread legs. He pulls him closer, resting his cheek on top of Draco’s head so that Draco’s own is pressed to his chest. Draco can hear his heart beating.

“Probably for the best anyway.” Potter’s voice sounds weird from this angle, Draco can feel it in his chest when he talks. “Springing you on everyone like that might not have been a good idea. Well, not _everyone_. Nev couldn’t make it, and Gin’s off in Europe somewhere still, looking at potential teams but.” Draco feels him shrug and tries not to tense at the mention of Weasley. Of course she hadn’t been here, there’s no way Potter would have invited Draco if she was going to be.

A very small part of Draco wants to ask him then, wants to give Potter the chance for the benefit of the doubt, but when he closes his eyes he can see that Prophet picture and he can imagine Potter’s face, hear him saying “Of course I’m still with her, Draco,” gesturing between the two of them, a frown line in the middle of his eyebrows as he asks “What did you think this was?” No, Draco can’t do that to himself, cowardly as it is. He’d rather go back to not thinking about it.

So instead he wraps his arms around Potter’s waist and hums in agreement. “Maybe you’re right. Wouldn’t want to ruin a party by bringing out the big, bad Slytherin and scaring everyone.”

Potter snorts at that, head falling back against the cupboard behind him with a soft thud. “I always got the impression that Slytherin threw the best parties, back at Hogwarts.”

“Hardly,” Draco scoffs. “It was definitely the Hufflepuffs. It’s always the quiet ones,” he adds at Potter’s incredulous look. “And their common room was right next to the kitchens. The Slytherin common room was always so bloody cold nobody wanted to party.”

Potter outright laughs at this, the dim light of the kitchen softening his face. “I suppose so. It is pretty gloomy down there.”

Draco frowns. “What would you know about it?”

Potter only taps his nose maddeningly and laughs again at Draco’s glare. “I was almost sorted Slytherin, you know.” He nudges Draco back gently and jumps down from the counter, grinning, saying “Would you like a tour?”

Later, after Potter’s given him a tour and refused to tell Draco how exactly he knows what the Slytherin common room looks like, making Draco think maybe the hat was right to almost sort him there, they lie in Potter’s bed and Draco watches his face as he sleeps. He’s trying to remember if they’ve ever spent an entire night together before, but he comes up blank. Usually Potter will turn up at his after Draco’s finished work and leave before he has to go back again, never staying overnight. Sure, he’s slept there, passed out for a couple of hours, but this feels different. Not least because they haven’t even had sex, Potter had just pulled him onto his bed after showing him rooms that Draco very distantly remembers from his childhood, and they’d lay there talking until Potter hadn’t been able to keep his eyes open. Now Draco can’t look away from him. His face gets so much younger in sleep, lines smoothed out and mouth slack. It strikes Draco sometimes how young they actually are, no matter how much they’ve been through or how much Draco plays at being an adult. They’re not even in their twenties yet. There’s so much time ahead of them.

///

After a surprisingly warm start to August, by the second week it’s raining again, just starting to drizzle when Draco gets in from work around 4am and then still going when he wakes up eight hours later. It’s nice to listen to, as he rolls over in bed, the sound louder when he gets up to shove his bedroom window open and smell the wet street below. Work’s been busy this week, people trying to make the most of the longer summer evenings before they disappear, and he hasn’t seen Potter much. He absently rubs the back of his neck as he stands there, leaning on the windowsill; it’s stiff from the overtime he did last night for some private party that had hired out the entire bar.

Draco’s glad the rain’s back, especially because he doesn’t feel much like leaving the house today and it’s a nice excuse. He scrubs a hand through his hair, feeling the limp strands and heads into his en suite.

Draco’d had a bath back at the Manor, a whole bathroom in fact, to himself, with taps that dispensed different bath potions or these huge, shining bubbles that floated around the room. He remembers being a child, laughing, trying to catch them, his mother wrapping him in a towel afterwards and brushing his wet hair. They’d been growing it out like his father his whole childhood, right up until the summer before Hogwarts when he’d decided he wanted it cut and wouldn’t take no for an answer, in the way eleven-year-olds who think they’re grown up enough to know everything never do. He’d cried afterwards, of course, instantly regretting it, but he hadn’t wanted his parents to know that so he’d refused their offers of regrowth charms and worn it short ever since. It’s probably longer now than it has been since then, though he doesn’t think he’ll ever grow it out fully. He already sees enough of his father when he looks in the mirror.

His bath in Notting Hill is big and white and has clawed feet, which he likes. It only has the one tap but it’s fun, squeezing brightly coloured liquid into the tub from plastic bottles, makes him feel young again. He lights some candles and puts some music on, cracking the bathroom window the smallest amount to let in the smell of the rain, mixing it with the scents he pours into the water.

Potter finds him in there, letting most of the steam out when he opens the door and giving Draco a bewildered look as though he’s just caught him doing something scandalous, like tearing pages out of books or the feathers off an owl. Draco doesn’t know why; Sunday afternoon is a perfectly respectable time for a bath, one might even go as far as to say the ideal time, if you were assuming you weren't going to be interrupted by messy-haired wizards in dark trousers and a wrongly-buttoned shirt.

“Sorry,” Potter says, which almost makes Draco laugh. Of all the things Potter could say sorry to him for, it’s walking in on him in the bath, like he hasn’t already seen all of Draco anyway, all the parts Draco lets him and some parts he’d never meant to show. Not that he wants apologies from Potter for any of the other, big, important stuff, it’s just funny, is all.

“Did you want something?” Draco asks, which is also odd, apparently they’re both trying new things today. Potter rarely apologises and Draco rarely, though he cringes slightly at the pathetic realisation of this, asks him why he’s here anymore, he just lets him in without question, leaves the bloody front door unlocked for him.

Potter looks shocked too, though that might be residual from the whole finding Draco in the bath thing. “No, I—” he starts to say, and seems unsure whether he should move further into the room or not. When Draco doesn’t say anything else he comes in gingerly, goes to sit on the closed toilet and apparently thinks better of it because then he slumps on the floor next to the bath, right on Draco’s damp bath mat, and rests his chin on the porcelain rim.

“Shit day,” he says eventually. Draco wants to roll his eyes because when you hate your job and everything it entails, every day is arguably a shit day, but he refrains.

He hums in a measured, neutral way. Potter knows what Draco thinks about his job; they’ve hashed it out several times since he’d first brought it up and Potter’s always the one who provokes Draco into it, too. Draco doesn’t feel qualified or worthy of giving Potter advice so he never mentions it but Potter seems determined to keep arguing about it. More often than not it ends with Potter no clearer on what he wants and one of them sticking their tongue down the other’s throat to shut them up. Draco definitely doesn’t feel like arguing about it whilst he’s in the bath. It’s supposed to be relaxing.

He does poke one foot out of the water and sort of wiggle his toes at Potter, which in split-second hindsight is a bit weird but it makes Potter smile, some of the stress lines on his face smoothing out slightly.

“I never understood the appeal,” he says then, motioning at the bubbles, the steam rising off the surface of the water.

“That’s because you’ve never done it properly, I suspect,” says Draco.

“No, I guess not. With my aunt and uncle, it was take longer than five minutes in the bathroom and be dragged out by my hair. And then showers, mostly, at Hogwarts.”

Draco chooses not to linger on the first part of that. Since they’ve fallen into this pattern of actually talking, of being more open with each other, he’s discovered Potter has this habit of dropping horrible bits of truth into casual conversation like it’s totally normal to spend the first eleven years of your life being, from what Draco has gathered, horrifically mistreated. It makes Draco equal parts furious and like he wants to do really boring, domestic things for Potter, like sit him down and make him eat a proper meal, or tuck him into bed, which is frankly embarrassing. 

“If you were a Prefect you would’ve at least had access to our bathrooms,” he says, thinking of Hogwarts carefully, approaching the memories in his head like one might poke a toe into the Great Lake in December, to see just how much it’s going to hurt when you jump in. “The Slytherin ones weren’t bad, but it was nice having some privacy.”

Potter raises his eyebrows at that, the beginning of a smirk at the corner of his mouth and Draco is glad his face is already flushed from the heat. He hadn’t meant privacy like _that_ at all, but it’s just now occurring to him that the subject of he and bathrooms and Potter is a dangerous one. Better to risk Potter teasing him than explain what he actually meant, that escaping into bathrooms where no one would follow him — with one awful exception — was a tiny, tiny respite back when his world was just starting to fall apart at the edges.

But he’s not thinking about that now, he refuses. Not here in this brightly lit room, with Belle & Sebastian playing softly and the windows all steamed up and Potter, probably getting his trousers all wet.

“I did actually use one once,” Potter says, trailing one hand in the bath now, sleeve shoved halfway up his forearm. He could reach out and touch Draco’s knee if he wanted, or Draco could move his leg into the path Potter’s fingers are making through the water. God, Draco just wants to be near him when he’s not here and when he is here he wants to be closer, always. “In fourth year, when I was trying to figure out the second task of the tournament. Cedric Diggory gave me the password.”

“Cedric Diggory,” Draco repeats, blowing air up to get his fringe out of his face, and then when Potter laughs at him, defensively, “What? Everyone had a crush on bloody Diggory. He was fit, even if he was a Hufflepuff.”

“I didn’t,” Potter says, still grinning. “Or, maybe I did, but I didn’t realise it at the time. I was too busy embarrassing myself over Cho.” His smile turns a bit rueful. Draco had forgotten about Chang, how she and Potter had had a thing — Pansy had told him after she saw them going to Hogsmeade together, her expression triumphant like she knew how pissed he’d be.

“Well,” he says. “At least you didn’t make badges to try and get her attention. _And_ I tried to flirt with Viktor Krum that year as well. God, fourteen was a rough age.”

“Draco,” Potter’s laughing again and something in Draco is so relieved that they’re not talking about Potter’s job, so relieved to see how different his face is to when he first walked in, that he doesn’t even flinch internally at hearing his first name. He's getting more used to it. “You made those badges to _bully_ me, not to impress Cedric.”

“Well, yes, but they also claimed Cedric was the real champion, didn’t they? Really, I was beating two bludgers with one bat, humiliating you all whilst showing my full support for him and his perfect hair.” He sighs theatrically. “I could never get mine to look like that, and I spent a lot of time on it, believe me.”

“Oh, I absolutely do,” Potter’s eyes flick up to where Draco’s hair is soft and slightly damp at the ends, falling all over the place in the humidity of the bathroom. Draco glares at him without any real heat. He watches as Potter looks down again at the water, the ripples his fingers make. He’s still smiling but it’s a bit softer, a bit sadder, when he says. “It’s odd, you know. I don’t talk about Cedric with anyone.”

Draco tenses up. He hadn’t even stopped to think, somehow he’d managed to forget that Potter was there when Diggory was murdered, barely three years ago. It doesn’t matter that both of them have seen countless people die since then, friends, family, enemies. Suddenly the past seems like a tactile thing that looms over them, and Draco’s just brought up the boy Potter watched die as if he’s nothing more than a schoolboy crush. This is precisely why they skirt around certain topics. Draco feels like if they delve too far back they won’t be able to stop until they’ve hashed everything out, all of it, and he’s not sure what the pair of them would look like on the other side of that.

He opens his mouth, already cringing, not sure how to make it ok, but Potter doesn’t look angry or upset. A little maybe, around the mouth, but not like he blames Draco for mentioning Diggory. “It’s fine,” he says, like Draco is the one who needs reassuring in this situation. “It’s good actually, to think about him like that, before everything went to shit. He did have pretty amazing hair.”

Draco still feels odd, like he’s waiting for Potter to decide that actually, no, Draco’s an insensitive idiot and he can’t stand to be around him any longer, or else demand they talk about their shared history right here and now. But Potter really doesn’t look like he’s going to do either of those things any time soon, so Draco lets himself relax, slowly, back against the bath, closing his eyes because it’s easier than searching Potter’s face for the emotions he thinks should be there and not finding them.

He resolutely does not jump when Potter’s hand finally does make contact with his knee. It’s not doing anything, just resting there, but it’s nice all the same. “Good to know you have a type though,” he says and Draco’s eyes snap open. “You know, Krum, Cedric..” he trails off and wiggles his eyebrows in that stupid suggestive way he has.

“I only like _good_ Quidditch players, Potter, so I don’t know what you think you’re implying,” he says archly, which only makes Potter laugh so hard he slips a bit on the wet floor, steadying himself with the hand on Draco’s knee and getting his sleeve all wet. Something’s shifted since that night in Potter’s kitchen and he laughs more easily around Draco now. It’s addictive, being the person to do that, to make Potter look like that, even if he’s mostly laughing _at_ Draco.

“Sorry,” Potter says, his laughter fading into quiet chuckles. “You just really reminded me of something ‘Mione said in sixth year.”

Draco almost grimaces; the past seems determined to rear its — if not entire ugly, then certainly uncomfortable — head tonight. He really has no idea what to say if they’re going to start talking about Granger, or any of other Potter’s friends for that matter, so he stays quiet again. The more he thinks about that night in Grimmauld Place the more grateful he is that he’d shown up after everyone had gone. It couldn’t have been anything but a disaster.

The water’s getting a bit cold now and his fingers have pruned up. He should get out but it seems like too much effort, when he could just lie here and hum along to the music instead.

“Draco,” Potter says, suddenly, after they’ve been quiet for a while. His voice is urgent, setting Draco immediately on edge.

“What?”

“I didn’t even notice before— You can’t have that in here!” He gestures over at where Draco’s CD player is balanced on the shelf next to the sink, now playing The Boy Done Wrong Again, which, Draco sends a silent, sarcastic prayer of thanks to the universe, Belle _and_ Sebastian for the comedic timing of that one.

“Why not?” he asks, frowning over at Potter. “I like listening to music when I’m in the bath.”

“Water and electricity don’t mix,” Potter says, eyes following the wire trailing out the back of the stereo. “If you get it wet..”

“I thought that was magic and electricity,” Draco grumbles, but sits up and pulls the plug out. There’s no point continuing if Potter’s going to make him turn the music off. Admittedly, he had wondered why there’d been none of those little socket things in this room; he’d had to plug the stereo into one in his bedroom and feed the wire under the bathroom door.

“It is, but this is more dangerous,” Potter looks confused for a second. “I think? I don’t actually know why, or how, but that’s what we were always told. Maybe water is a conductor?”

Draco has no idea what that means but he grudgingly takes Potter’s word for it. He’d rather not have to explain to his neighbours that he’d blown up his house because he couldn’t even take a bath without the appropriate soundtrack.

“Pass me a towel, will you?” Draco asks, and Potter does, eyes on Draco’s body even as he covers it and goes to turn the stereo off, picking it up by the handle and carrying it back into the bedroom. He turns it off at the socket as well, just to be safe, though there’s no water in here to conduct anything or whatever Potter had said.

As he finds some clothes and towels his hair, Potter leans against the door to the en suite. Draco doesn’t even flinch when he points his wand at his sleeve and shoots a stream of hot air out of it to dry it. He's started doing more spells around Draco, and Draco’s getting used to the fact that magic is an unconscious extension of Potter, like it used to be an extension of himself. His own wand is still shut in that kitchen drawer and he’s not sure he’ll take it out any time soon, but he’s accepted that casual magic is a part of having Potter around.

“Are you hungry?” Draco asks, blinking still-damp hair out of his face, eyes on Potter’s exposed wrist as he holds his sleeve out. “Or did you grab something at work?”

“I wasn’t at work,” Potter says, inspecting the fabric and, seemingly satisfied, rolling it back up his arm. “I was at the Burrow for lunch. Though, I didn’t actually eat much.” He laughs and it’s nothing like the warm sound he was making only minutes ago.

Draco feels himself tense and then forces himself to relax. Potter had said he'd had a shit day and Draco had assumed it’d been work, that never-ending source of stress and pain in Potter’s life. Maybe he has a couple more of those, Draco hasn’t really thought about it before.

“Ok,” he says, carefully. Everything he’d said as a teenage nightmare aside, he had sort of thought the Weasley’s house was like a second home for Potter, and therefore pretty spectacularly not-shit, especially when filled with the people who, quite obviously from Draco’s perspective, loved him most in the world. “So, food?”

Potter doesn’t speak straight away. He looks at Draco like he wants him to ask about it and is simultaneously very grateful that he hasn’t. “Can I cook?” is what he finally asks, which is not really what Draco expected. “I feel like doing something with my hands; it’s— a good distraction.”

Draco’s eyes flicker down to said hands and he stops himself from suggesting several other things Potter could do with them, only nodding and making his way downstairs. He wasn’t aware Potter _could_ cook, but it makes sense now he thinks about it.

“I don’t know what I’ve got in,” he says and hears Potter snort behind him.

“Your kitchen is better stocked than my local Tesco,” Potter says, which might be true. Draco had been in there on the way home from Grimmauld Place and they hadn’t even had the 85% cocoa chocolate he’d wanted.

Plus, Draco had got very excited last week when he’d overheard a conversation at work and realised he could use his laptop to get someone to literally bring an entire food shop to his house. The man who’d delivered it had told him it was a pretty new service that they were trialling, with the air of somebody who had twenty more deliveries like this to make in the next four hours and was hoping it was a trend that wouldn’t last the end of the decade.

Draco found it a lot easier to spend money when he didn’t have to handle the actual notes or coins, which was probably immature of him but that, combined with the fact that he didn’t have to try and carry everything home from the shops in one trip, meant he might have gone a bit overboard. It made him feel good though, having his fridge and all his cupboards full, like he was actually functioning.

He’s been sort of— attempting to learn to cook for himself, though his method of just going through recipe books and trying everything had made Jenny laugh herself stupid when she’d stayed over that one night and realised Draco could only make really fancy breakfast dishes and didn’t own a toaster. He’d gone and bought one the next day and she’d eaten the eggs benedict he’d made so he hadn't taken it too personally.

He leaves Potter to it, letting him rifle through Draco’s cupboards and raid his fridge, pulling down pots and pans as Draco sits at the table and opens his laptop. He’s been thinking about classes again, though he hasn’t brought it up to Potter. He takes a moment to acknowledge the odd domesticity of the moment, Potter seemingly at home in his kitchen, the comfortable silence between them.

As he loads up a web page — he still doesn’t really understand the Internet, but he’s getting there — he thinks about his future. Summer’s winding down, which always puts him in the mood for change. September, rather than January, has always felt like a new beginning to him, and he misses learning, even though he enjoys his current job.

The problem is, as much as he’s adapted to this new life, even falling in love with little parts of it in stilted, surprising ways, what he really misses is learning about magic. He still feels weird about actually doing it but he also can’t bring himself to be overly interested in the kind of things Muggles study, mostly because he’s so far behind everything. He misses the feeling of knowing how to do something, of being good at something, of writing essays he knows are intelligently worded or successfully making tricky potions he’s never tried before. School had always come fairly naturally to him because he genuinely found it interesting, and because he’d grown up around magic, it made sense, it was part of him. The idea of starting completely from scratch is unsettling.

“Do you not have any butter?” Potter breaks Draco’s train of thought, his head stuck inside the fridge.

“If it’s not in there, I’m all out.” Draco replies, distracted from his computer screen. “What are you making?”

“Some kind of risotto?” Potter’s voice goes up at the end like a question. “You have literal quail’s eggs in here, but no butter.” He laughs, closing the fridge with his elbow, his hands full of vegetables and what looks like a huge slab of Parmesan. “Never mind, I’ll use oil. Where’s your wine?”

Draco gestures at his wine fridge, slightly bewildered. It’s surreal. Not that Potter is really cooking _for_ Draco in the full sense of the phrase, but he’s hardly going to just make enough for himself is he, and he’s there, in Draco’s house, making Draco food like it’s something they do all the time. Draco watches him rummage around in drawers until he finds a corkscrew. He could have had the cork out in a second if he used his wand, but he doesn’t.

It tastes amazing, of course, when they actually get round to eating it. It takes bloody ages, because Potter insists that adding the stock mixture to the rice ladle by ladle is the key to a perfectly creamy risotto and Draco whines at him and maybe gets a bit distracted watching his hands sure and steady as they chop vegetables for a salad. They finish the wine that doesn’t go into the food and Draco wonders how this is his life, imagines what it would be like if it was like this always, Potter sitting across the table from him and grating cheese onto his meal.

///

Of course, just when Draco lets himself admit that things are going ok, more than ok, good even, everything goes to complete shit. Or, not _complete_ shit, it’s just he comes home from work on Thursday to find an owl on his doorstep, and it doesn’t look like the soft french barn owls his mother usually sends. Come to think of it, she hasn’t been bothering at all recently, but Draco can’t really blame her, he hadn’t replied to any of her letters.

This owl is dark and small and it waits for Draco to take the letter from its beak before it flies off into the night. It’s more of a scrap of parchment than a letter, barely a couple of lines.

 

_ Draco —_

__

_ Minor emergency at work. Am not in the country but don’t worry. Just wanted to let you know _

__

_ H x_

Draco reads it by the light of the lamppost next to his front door and then goes inside, stands in his kitchen and stares at it. He’d last seen Potter on Sunday night, he’d sat right there at the dining table when they’d finished eating and let Draco ride him, slow and careful, both of them half-dressed. His hands had been so sure and steady on Draco’s waist. He’d pressed his lips to the middle of Draco’s chest when he’d come, right on the scar line.

Draco hadn’t been worried about not hearing from him since then because they don’t really do this — check up on each other. Ok, he’s found himself missing Potter’s company a bit more these past days when Potter’s been so busy with work, or whatever it is he does when he’s not here, but this is out of character. Potter’s never let him know what he’s doing before, he’s always just stayed away or shown up whenever he wants to. Draco doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t know what this tight feeling in his chest means either, but it feels like panic.

Surely, if Potter wanted to let him know what he was doing it means it’s something risky. Or that he thinks he might not come back, at least for a while, long enough that he needs to inform Draco about it. Or, even scarier, it means that he cares enough about Draco to keep him updated. Draco really doesn’t know what to do with that. They’ve been getting closer, sure, especially since that night in Grimmauld Place, spending almost all the time they’re not working together. And Potter’s been working a lot over the past couple of weeks. It’s natural that Draco’s been missing him, natural that he can’t get him out of his head, that he feels somehow more himself when Potter’s around. Natural that he’s only just now realising he might be falling for the bastard, now that there’s the possibility he could get himself killed whilst Draco sits here, no idea which country he’s even in. Fuck.

///

Fortunately, Draco’s become a master of compartmentalisation. Some of it has to stem from his Occlumency skills, but it doesn’t feel at all magical forcing himself to push the rather large part of his brain that wants to go to pieces both at the realisation that his feelings for Potter have become so much more than he intended and the fact that he might not see him again, at least not with all of him intact, into the box in his head resolutely labelled “Do Not Think About”. He still has to go to work, which is a good distraction, but his house feels oddly empty now that he knows what it feels like with someone else there. Why did he move somewhere with so many rooms? He only ever has one person over.

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to wait that long because the Tuesday after he gets home from work, exhausted — he hasn’t been sleeping well at all — and finds his door already unlocked. Potter’s in the kitchen, just leaning there against the counter, and Draco has to physically stop himself from crossing the room. He’s not sure if he wants to punch Potter or hug him.

His face looks dark, not just because the lights are off, but shadowed, more like it had at the beginning of the summer. It makes Draco feel off, and he can’t tell if those are bruises on Potter’s face in this dim lighting.

“Hello,” Draco says when Potter only stares at him. He’s not in Auror robes but his clothes look hastily tugged on, not sitting quite right on his body.

“Sorry,” is the first thing Potter says, and his voice cracks right along with Draco’s resolve. He’s over there in three paces, close, but careful not to touch. Potter looks more breakable than Draco’s ever seen him.

“It’s ok,” Draco says, because it suddenly is, as long as Potter’s here, alive, in front of him. All his worry over the last week suddenly feels stupid, irrelevant, embarrassing almost. Of course Potter was going to be ok. “Did you just get back?”

Potter nods.

“Want to talk about it?”

Potter sighs. “Not really,” he says. He sounds tired. “We were tracking someone, ex-Death Eater. Followed him to Germany. There was a bit of hostage situation.”

Draco’s entire body is tense with the effort of not reaching out. He doesn’t know what Potter needs, doesn’t know how to do this. “Who?” he asks, before he can help himself.

Potter meets his eyes, and they’re steady at least, if clouded with fatigue, the skin around the right one slightly raised. “Avery.”

Draco determinedly does not flinch. There's a pause. “Creepy bastard.”

Somehow it’s the right thing to say because Potter sags, laughs, and God, Draco’s missed the sound of it, even if it’s not really normal right now, something off and exhausted about it. He lets himself reach out then and Potter’s body sags even further, allowing Draco to hold him up.

“Thanks for letting me know where you were,” he says, barely louder than a whisper. He can feel the slight tremble in Potter as he holds him.

Potter’s voice is quieter even than his own. “Thanks for being here when I got back.”

///

Draco supposes it’s good timing that he has the next day off, because Potter spends a solid twenty hours sleeping and Draco has trouble leaving him alone. It’s just— now that he’s back here in Draco’s bed, impossibly real and solid, it feels like he might disappear again if Draco takes his eyes off him. So he lies there, getting up for food, starting and abandoning three different books, listening to the rain on the window, the same sound he’s been hearing all summer. It really will be autumn soon.

He knows that when Potter wakes up they should probably talk, about a lot of things. Now that Draco has pulled his head out of his ass and realised what he actually feels for Potter, it seems near impossible to keep it to himself. The knowledge of it burns beneath his skin; he watches the rise and fall of Potter’s chest and thinks _I might love you_ , trying out the words in his head. It’s terrifying, but it doesn’t feel like a lie.

///

Potter wakes up when the sky has gone dark again. He blinks awake slowly, his eyes so warm when they focus on Draco that Draco has to look away, scared everything he feels will be obvious if he meets Potter’s eyes.

Potter stretches and rolls out of bed, Draco following him downstairs as he raids the fridge for food. He looks tired still, unsmiling but more normal than he had last night, less tense. The bruise on his face doesn’t look so bad when he’s looking at Draco, biting into a chicken leg.

“Come with me somewhere,” he asks, when he’s eaten. Draco doesn’t even think about saying no.

Potter grabs his hand and then they’re twisting through darkness and Draco feels the familiar nausea before his feet find solid ground. He’s not sure where they are at first but it’s definitely outside, it’s dark and the wind is blowing so strongly that he stumbles. Potter is right there at his elbow to steady him.

“Sorry,” he apologises, his voice snatched away immediately by the wind. “I didn’t think— has it been a while?”

He assumes Draco hasn’t apparated recently, which is true, but his unsteadiness is more due to the fact that Potter has apparently, now Draco looks around, taken them up onto a fucking rooftop. London sprawls out below them, lights twisting and moving through streets, cars speeding along roads and a hundred windows lit up as tiny squares of light against the purple night. It’s dizzying, even though the space is large and walled along the edge so that he couldn’t fall unless he actively tried to, which, he realises with a twinge of odd humour, is something he hasn’t thought about doing seriously for a couple of months.

“Where are we?” he asks, unable to look away from the way Potter is half-lit from the city around them, the wind tearing through his hair. Potter only makes a sort of shrug in response and sinks to the ground, back against a door in the middle of the concrete space. Draco doesn’t know if there are stairs behind it down to whatever building they’re on top of or not; it doesn’t feel like the kind of place people would normally spend time.

As he lowers himself beside Potter, the cool metal against his back is grounding. Everything up here is cold in that bracing way that feels like waking up, the wind a powerful push even as they’re sheltered on one side from the worst of it. The ground is softer than he expected, if a little damp, and he shoots Potter a sideways look because clearly he’s cast something, Draco can feel his magic woven into the floor. He wonders if he’s just sensitive to Potter’s magic because it’s the only magic he’s ever around anymore, or if it has more to do with Potter himself.

They’re quiet for a moment, Draco’s eyes on the sky that’s never really dark in London. He can’t see the streets below from here but he watches planes track their way across the deep blue, tiny lights flashing, the night fading to a dull orange the nearer to the skyline it gets.

“I like being up here,” Potter says, quiet, almost lost in the wind. “It feels like flying, a bit.”

Draco hums, isn’t sure if he agrees. He misses flying sometimes. He sort of gets what Potter means though, something about being this high up, whether it’s on top of several storeys or on a broomstick, has a way of making him feel both tiny and huge.

Then Potter says: “It’s September soon. People are talking about going back to Hogwarts, re-doing their last year, you know.” Draco hadn’t known, but he supposes it makes sense. “Hermione thinks I should.”

Draco isn’t looking at him, unsure what’s prompted this train of thought but somehow convinced that if he turns his head Potter might stop. It feels like a night for talking about things, finally, though Draco’s not sure what he thinks — or hopes — these things are exactly.

“You already have a job,” he says, careful, always so careful around Potter, except when he’s not. Potter hums, swallows, loud enough for Draco to hear.

“ _You_ could go back,” Potter says like he’s thought about it quite a lot. Draco hadn’t really been expecting that, he didn’t think they were going to talk about _him_ really, but he considers it for a second and knows almost immediately he won’t. The person he was at Hogwarts feels dead, buried, not just gone but long gone. He doesn’t know how to reconcile who he is now with the place.

He turns and eyes Potter’s profile. “I won’t. Granger’s right — you could. You don’t like your job.”

Draco doesn’t say that he doesn’t much like Potter’s job either, if it's going to separate them like this and Potter doesn’t disagree because it would be such an obvious lie. It’s true that he doesn’t need to repeat a year, he’s already on his way to running half the department. But Draco can see him back there, at Hogwarts. It’d always seemed like home to Potter, something that Draco had sneered at as a child, when he’d felt like he was destined for greater things than being stuck at school. Even this Potter next to him, a little war-torn and angry and older, so much older than when they were at Hogwarts together, seems like he’d fit right back in amongst those corridors, finally able to have a more normal year. Draco would have given anything back then to be involved in the kind of adventures that always interrupted Potter’s school years, now he knows it’s the opposite of what Potter wanted. He knows the appeal of finding normality himself now, too.

Potter’s face looks thinner, his cheeks sucked in like he’s chewing on the inside of his mouth in frustration. “No,” he says, though it doesn’t sound like he’s agreeing with Draco about his job, it sounds like he’s saying no to doing what he actually wants, what will make him happy.

“You won’t let yourself be happy,” Draco says, tone carefully neutral. Potter makes a noise of frustration and runs a hand through his hair, words suddenly spilling out.

“It’s not that, it’s— Ok, look, obviously I know how lucky I am, I mean— I won didn’t I? I survived. Not just the war, but this week as well. I keep surviving.” He pauses. “With this job or, you know, the chance to go back to school, I know I could have whatever I wanted, probably, within reason or whatever, but I don’t know what it _is_ that I want and so I’m stuck, right? And that’s where it all gets too much because if I can have anything and I can’t decide what that anything should be then what’s the point? Isn’t that pathetic?” He laughs humourlessly. “To have everything within my reach and not know what the fuck would make me happy? I’m sick of just surviving shit, it’s not the same as living.”

“No,” Draco says. Potter is such a— he’s a complete idiot and truly the most oblivious person Draco’s ever met. He thinks every doubt he has is unique to himself, a weakness. “Potter, barely anybody knows what they want. That’s not the bloody point! We’re teenagers for fucks’ sake, you’re supposed to be figuring it out still.” He bites his tongue and doesn’t say all the other things he’s thinking, that Potter has been doing things because he _had_ to and not because he _wanted_ to his whole life, that growing up like that would fuck anyone up, that he’s not weak or selfish or ungrateful for not knowing what he wants now. Even if him not knowing has the potential to destroy Draco’s emotional state, dignity and life, in that order.

“I guess,” Potter sounds skeptical but he doesn’t argue. Something about the moment feels important.

Draco tugs a hand through his hair, his fingers pulling without meaning to so that it hurts a little, like he needs it too. The slight pain, the bite of the cold, they keep him tethered. Up here, he feels oddly insubstantial, like the wind could carry him away.

“Look,” He wills his voice to stay steady. “You don’t have to decide everything all at once. Who gives a shit if you don’t know what job you want to do? Just take it one thing at a time and sod anyone who’s trying to rush you. But—”

And Draco closes his eyes, because if he’s about to ruin everything he’d rather not see Potter’s face when he does it. “You have to decide about this." He half gestures at the small space between them. "I can’t— if Weasley— if Ginny—” he just about gets the name out, breaking his own unspoken rule not to ask, never to ask, and then takes a deep breath. “If she's what's going to make you happy then we need to stop doing— this. And then you need to leave me alone, probably, because I don’t know if I can be around you.”

He feels weird, saying it at last, a little shocked at himself and a little like he might actually throw up. When he’d been lying next to Potter only hours ago he’d been wondering how exactly to tell him how he felt, and now this has come out of his mouth instead. Maybe it’s the same thing, actually, maybe this is as good as a confession.

Potter is quiet so long Draco has to look at him and when he does Potter’s frowning, the confusion on his face so open and blatant that it must be genuine.

“Ginny?” he asks at last. “What— what are you talking about? You think me and Ginny are still together?”

Draco feels a horrible mix of hysteria and insecurity bubbling in his chest and he redirects it into anger, allowing the stress of the past week to mask it. “Well I don’t know, do I, Potter? How can I be expected to keep up with your love life? You don’t fucking tell me anything, you just show up at my house and get your dick out and then you leave!”

It’s unfair and Potter flinches at it but then he’s angry too, voice raised. “It’s not like you want me to stay! You never asked me to! I thought you just wanted it to be sex, you can get so pissy when I show up, like you’re barely tolerating me being around! I don’t know how to read your mind!”

Draco wants to laugh because it’s not true, none of what they’re saying is true, and it hasn’t been for weeks. It’s been more than just sex for a long time, maybe from the beginning even, for him at least. His chest feels lighter at getting it all out in the open even as he feels his familiar frustration at Potter threaten to overwhelm him. “I had to keep you at a bloody distance, Potter. You have no idea what you want.”

Potter grabs his face then, his fingers freezing against Draco’s skin as he frames it. His eyes are so, so green, Draco’s going to pass out. “I want _you_ , you idiot. That’s the only thing I _do_ know. Me and Gin broke up at the end of last summer and never got back together. Do you really think I would have invited you to that party with all my mates if I’d still been with her and fucking you on the side? Fuck, do you really think I’d be here with you at _all_ if I was still with her? I mean— Jesus, Draco, is that what you think of me? I love her, but not like that. We were a nightmare together when we tried again. There’s too much history there.”

And there’s not too much history between us? Draco wants to ask but he’s having trouble finding his words. Potter can’t be— this can’t be happening. It doesn’t feel real, up here, a million miles away from everything.

“God, how could you not know? I can’t stop thinking about you, I’m always seeking you out, it’s fucking embarrassing. All I could think about when I was away was getting back here.” Potter’s gaze is blazing and Draco laughs. It comes out a bit wet and he swallows, blinks hard. He can’t even begin to find how to respond to that so he pulls Potter forward and smashes their mouths together. It’s too messy and there’s too much teeth for it to be really called a kiss until Potter tilts his head, fits them together better and licks, deep, into Draco’s mouth, pressing him back against the door they’ve been leaning against.

Draco can’t breathe, can’t see or smell or taste anything that isn’t Potter and he feels drunk with it, drunk on everything Potter’s just said and on the feel of his shoulders, always so solid beneath Draco’s hands.

Potter’s hands are in Draco’s hair and he tangles his fingers there, tugging slightly until Draco is gasping and gripping his arms. His arse has gone numb against the freezing concrete, Potter’s cushioning charm flickering and failing with his concentration, Draco’s back cold against the metal. He digs his fingers in, trying to get Potter closer, to absorb his warmth, until Potter gets the hint and climbs practically into his lap, detaching their mouths to bury his face in Draco’s neck. Even his breath is hot against Draco’s skin, everything about him burning in sharp contrast to the chill wind.

“Draco,” he keeps saying, “Draco, Draco,” even though Draco’s told him not to so many times. His fingers shake as they move down, mapping the skin of Draco’s face, his closed eyes, parted lips.

Draco feels desperate and shaky with it, his whole body shuddering at the weight of Potter on top of him, Potter’s movements bordering on frantic as he grinds his hips down. When he pulls back the look in his eyes is wild and lost and determined and Draco can’t, he really can’t look at that so he gets Potter’s trousers undone instead and shoves his hand into his boxers, cataloguing the flinch on Potter’s face at the grip of his cold fingers, his teeth sinking into in his bottom lip.

Potter keeps trying to catch his eye but Draco’s good at this now, knows all the ways to distract him. He knows how to drag this out, loosen his fist until the touch is barely there, knows when to squeeze on the upstroke, knows that if he wants Potter to stop looking at him like that he needs to get his other fucking hand off of Potter’s face where it’s holding his cheek in a far too tender grip. This is dangerous territory — Potter’s mouth parting against his thumb, the very tip of his tongue wet against the pad as he pants, chest heaving.

Draco can feel Potter getting close, despite the awkward angle and the fact that his palm is too dry. He pulls his hand out to lick it and lets his eyes flutter at the choked noise Potter makes when he returns, his movements slicker, easier. Draco gets his other hand on the back of Potter’s neck and pulls him forward so he doesn’t have to look at him. He could come like this, from the feel of Potter over him, in his hands, his hair blowing in Draco’s face because he’s buried against Draco’s neck again. Draco’s shifting his own hips up against the pressure of Potter on him, the friction muted and not nearly enough through too many layers of clothes.

Potter clenches up with a swipe of Draco’s thumb over the head of his cock, his whole body tensing. Draco strokes once down his back, hand following the length of his spine in a gesture far sweeter and gentler than he intends it to be and Potter loses it, shaking apart, mouth open on a low, pained noise as he comes all over Draco’s hand. Draco keeps stroking his cock through it, free arm keeping him clutched close until Potter is gasping and going still.

There’s a moment or two where their surroundings suddenly assault Draco’s senses again — the cold, the noise of the city all around them, below them, everything that had faded into unimportance — and then it’s gone again, his focus narrowing back as Potter slides down his body. He doesn’t bother cleaning either of them up, just undoes Draco’s jeans and pulls his cock out, on his front between Draco’s legs, which spread automatically to make room.

Potter doesn’t do this that often, it’s usually been Draco on his knees these past weeks and he likes it like that, he likes how Potter’s hands feel in his hair and how he babbles like he can’t stop himself when Draco’s mouth is on him. But he likes this too, and Potter is sloppy tonight, moaning around Draco’s cock even though he’s just come, taking him as far as he can with just his mouth, hands pinning Draco to the ground by his hips, arms braced on his thighs for balance. Draco’s not going to last long, not with Potter’s enthusiastic tongue and his eyes flicking up to Draco’s when Draco pushes his hair back out of the way.

Draco lets his head fall back against the metal with a thud and swears loudly as Potter sucks him so sweetly it almost hurts and then he comes, violently, without warning and Potter swallows it all down, refusing to pull off until Draco has to physically push him back when it gets too sensitive. Even then he doesn’t go far, resting his head on Draco’s thigh and just breathing, letting Draco run his fingers through his hair.

“It’s bloody freezing up here,” Draco says, catching his breath. He feels the puff of air as Potter breathes a laugh and shakes his head, sitting up and leaving Draco even colder as he pulls back. He looks at Draco’s face the same way he has been all summer, though it doesn't feel like it usually does. Maybe because Draco can still hear everything Potter had said before their kiss, even as the wind whistles through his ears.

Potter watches him tuck himself back in, both of them zipping up their jeans, and then he gets to his feet, extending a hand to help Draco up. He pulls him right to the edge so that they’re leaning on the low wall, elbows side by side.

“What now?” Potter doesn’t look worried, his gaze level as it meets Draco’s, a flash of something odd, too happy and young in his eyes. Draco has no clue. Short term, they should probably get off the rooftop before Draco’s fingers go completely numb. Long term, he should probably start calling Potter by his first name. The idea of it doesn’t really make his stomach twist uncomfortably anymore.

He shrugs, the movement of it made lopsided by the way Potter is pressed so closely against his left side. He doesn’t tell Potter that he might be in love with him, but he thinks maybe Potter gets that something has once again shifted and settled between them, hopefully for the last time. For now it feels ok to just stay here for a bit, Draco’s home spread out below him. Maybe sort of pressed right next to him as well.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are always appreciated!! i have a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/talitharoberts/playlist/0RilczNfgF4uwifZf0cWD0?si=YNV8CG9tTd6sGqFTzf9V-Q) for this fic if you're interested  
> thanks for reading xx


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